PROMISE AND FULFILMENT PALESTINE 1917-1949

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PROMISE AND FULFILMENT
Palestine

Books by Arthur KoestUr

SPANISH TESTAMENT

THE GLADIATORS

DARKNESS AT NOON

SCUM OF THE EARTH

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE

THE YOGI AND THE COMMISSAR

TWILIGHT BAR
THIEVES IN THE NIGHT
INSIGHT AND OUTLOOK

PROMISE AND
FULFILMENT

Palestine

BY

ARTHUR KOESTLER

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1949

Copyright, 1949, by Arthur Koestler

All rights reserved no part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection
with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

FIRST PRINTING

Printed in the United States of America

TO

ABRAM AND JASHA WEINSHALL

CITIZENS OF ISRAEL

AS A TOKEN OF A QUARTER-CENTURY

OF FRIENDSHIP

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY sincere thanks are due to : R. H. S. Grossman,
M.P., and Messrs. Hamish Hamilton, for permission
to use the long extract (pp. 102-7) from Grossman's
Palestine Mission ; to a member of the Israeli Foreign
Office, who wishes to remain anonymous, for per-
mission to print his " Report from Jerusalem "
(pp. 234-8) ; to Mr. George Pape, Librarian of the
Public Information Office in Tel Aviv, and Dr.
G. Pollack of the Israeli Ministry of Finance, for
valuable research work ; and to Miss Daphne Wood-
ward, for helping with the proofs.

A.K.

PREFACE

THIS book consists of three parts, " Background ", " Close-up "
and " Perspective ". The first part is a survey of the develop-
ments which led to the foundation of the State of Israel. It lays
no claim to historical completeness, and is written from a specific
angle which stresses the part played by irrational forces and
emotive bias in history. I am not sure whether this emphasis has
not occasionally resulted in over-emphasis as is almost in-
evitable when one tries to redress a balance by spot-lighting
aspects which are currently neglected. But it was certainly not
my intention, by underlining the psychological factor, to deny or
minimize the importance of the politico-economic forces. My
aim was rather to present, if I may borrow a current medical term,
a " psycho-somatic " view of one of the most curious episodes in
modern history.

The second part, " Close-up ", is meant to give the reader a
close and coloured, but not I hope technicoloured, view of the
Jewish war and of everyday life in the new State. It opens and
ends with extracts from the diary of my last sojourn as a war
correspondent in Israel. The emphasis here is on life in the
towns, with only occasional glimpses of the collective settlements,
since I have given a detailed description of these in an earlier
book.

The third part, " Perspective ", is an attempt to present to
the reader a comprehensive survey of the social and political
structure, the cultural trends and future prospects of the Jewish
State.

I have tried to show elsewhere that the creative processes of
the artist and the scientist follow the same mental pattern, and
that the sciences may legitimately be called " neutral arts ",
separated from the " emotive arts " not by any distinct barrier
but merely by the quality of our emotive reactions. In this sense

vii

Viii PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

history, too, is a " neutral art " with mythology and bardic
folklore as connecting links to the " emotive arts " of drama and
fiction. But the emotive neutrality which should characterize the
chronicler is not the same thing as indifference, and his object-
ivity can only be the result of a subjective passion for the pursuit
of truth. It is a poor sort of impartiality which stands outside
the parties, untouched by their emotions ; the good judge, like
the playwright and historian, absorbs the subjective truth con-
tained in each of the conflicting pleas, and his verdict is a syn-
thesis of their part-truths, not their denial. In other words,
<r objectivity " is a state of balanced emotions, not an emotive
vacuum.

This book, then, should be regarded as a subjective pursuit
of the objective truth. I lived in Palestine from my twentieth to
my twenty-third year, as a farmer, tramp, and on various odd
jobs ; finally as a foreign correspondent. I have since revisited
the country at fairly regular intervals, and each of these visits
provided an occasion not only to study developments in the
country, but also my personal attitude to it. The last phase of
this pilgrim's progress through a thicket of emotive and ideo-
logical entanglements is summed up in the Epilogue. It may
also be read as a prologue, and serve as an indication of the point
of view from which certain controversial problems are treated in
this book.

Leaving controversial issues aside, the first and main purpose
of this book may be summed up by a phrase of Laplace : " If we
were able to make an exact catalogue of all particles and forces
which are active in a speck of dust, the laws of the universe at
large would hold no more mysteries for us ".

On a medium-sized school globe the State of Israel occupies
not much more space than a speck of dust ; and yet there is
hardly a political, social or cultural problem whose prototype
cannot be found in it, and found in a rare concentration and
intensity. The very smallness of this country of about three-
quarters of a million souls makes it easy to survey trends which
in other nations appear confused and diluted by size. The fact
that it so often was in the past, and is again in the present, in the

PREFACE IX

glow in a phosphorescent light. The fact that it is a State of
Jews, and of Jews of the most conscious and intense type, makes
the microscopic processes in this microscopic country reflect laws
of universal validity : for Jewry is not a question of race " it is
the human condition carried to its extreme ".

Israel's rebirth as a nation after two thousand years is a freak
phenomenon of history. But in all the branches of science *the
observation of freak phenomena yields important clues to general
laws. Dwarf stars and human giants, radioactivity and partheno-
genesis, prophets, maniacs and saints are all freaks which carry
the conditions of normality to a pointed and profiled extreme.
So does this race of eternal victims with its flayed skin and exposed
nerves, which demonstrates, with the horrible precision of an
anatomic atlas, a condition of man otherwise mercifully hidden
from us.

This book, then, is not about the Jewish race and the country
of Israel as such, but that country and its people are regarded here
as a specimen of humanity to be examined under the social
microscope. Some of the reasons why this specimen is so par-
ticularly fit to yield to the observer results of general interest have
just been explained. Whatever else the State of Israel may be,
it has come to signify to me a country more transparent than any
other to the basic archetypes of human conflict and experience.
For Israel is merely reproducing to-day a very old drama in
modern costume while, in the scorching light of the Judean
hills, eternity looks on through the window of time.

TEL AVIV-CHARTRETTES
August 1948- January 1949

CONTENTS

PACJB

PREFACE vii

BOOK ONE: BACKGROUND

PART ONE

CONCEPTION AND GESTATION (1917-1939)

CHAP.

I. ROMANTICS AND ROUTINE 3

Jewry as a freak of history Freak character of the
Balfour Declaration Its motives : the subjective factor in
history Its meaning : an exercise in applied semantics
What is a " national home " ? The romantic and the
trivial planes of History : Prophets versus Civil Servants.

II. THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM THE APEX n

Gentlemen in morning-coats arrive The Jewish Agency :
rise of a shadow government Attractions and repulsions
in the psychological triangle The weight of imponder-
abilia The Marxist view of Palestine history The " dia-
bolic " view The ** psycho-somatic " view.

The facts : policy on two levels Indecision and uncon-
scious bias Public security and the lures of appeasement
Summary.

III. THE TRIANGLE : THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 21

Foundations of Israel The problem of historic justice
Various conceptions of it The variables of time and
value Only relative criteria applicable.

The sell-out of the effendi class Legislation protecting
the tenant The myth of the dispossessed Arab The
mess of pottage Social structure of Arab society.

Influence of Jewish colonization on Arab development
Statistics Summary : the ethical aspects of the conflict
The Arab case Jewish self -righteousness and cultural
isolationism.

IV. THE TRIANGLE : THE JEWISH ANGLE 36

The pre-Zionist community The old settlers Their
warning example Planned socialized character of Zionist
colonization Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoi and the Bible
Begging bowls and high finance Summary : the pre-natal
conditioning of a nation.

xi

Xll PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

PART TWO

SUSPENSE (1939-1945)

CHAP. PAGE

V. THE PALESTINE MUNICH 45

The collapse of a dream and the beginning of a nightmare
Antecedents of the White Paper The Mufti's rebellion and
its reward Decline and fall of the Middle East experts.

The philosophy of appeasement Implications of a
Round Table Conference Mitigating circumstances of
British policy On disbelieving atrocities Relativity of
ethical judgment.

VI. THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 55

The League refuses to endorse the White Paper Jewish
denial of its legality The death-blow Let the children
come unto me The one spy in a hundred " Nothing
whatever will be done ".

Assandu t Assiirti and Tiger HUl Pacific , Patria and
Milos Atlantic and Salvador The Struma The
blindness of the heart.

The little death ships and the rise of terrorism.

VII. THE RISE OF HAGANAH 66

The Shomrim: Hebrew Buffalo Bills The twilight o
illegality Haganah during the Arab revolt New watch-
towers go up Wingate, Lawrence of the Hebrews.

The negro changes colour Arms searches and arms
trials His Majesty's loyal Jewish terrorists The death of
Raziel The illegal war effort.

The triangle in the war Jewish first and second thoughts
British second and third thoughts The Arabs : no
more " bonjour ".

Rommel ante portas The second Anglo- Jewish honey-
moon Skull and double-crossbones The show- trials
The cancer in the war effort.

VIII. THE RISE OF TERRORISM 90

"An eye for an eye" versus "Thou shalt not kill"
Polish revolutionaries and " coloured Jews" The etiquette
of terrorism Abraham Stern, the gunman poet The split
between Irgun and Stern Death of Raziel and Stern
Arrival of Menachem Beigin Friedman- Yellin's escape
from Latrun Haganah's illegal war against the terrorists
Kidnappings and denunciations Ambiguity of the Zionist

CONTENTS xiii

PART THREE

THE BIRTH-PANGS (1945-1948)

CHAP. PAGE

IX. THE DISPLACED NATION 101

The victory of the Labour Party Great expectations
And shattered illusions Anatomy of the D.P. A Labour
M.P. in the Jewish Hades " This nation must emigrate."

X. THE ROAD TO DISASTER 108

New factors on the post-war scene Labour's Palestine
pledges The struggle for the rescue of the 100,000 The
impact of American opinion Haganah's conversion to
terrorism Bevin's first statement on Palestine Appoint-
ment of the Anglo-American Committee.

The Committee's report The arguments for its rejection
The end of Balfour's vision.

XL THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS 118

The Sphinx without a secret The vicious circle of
bureaucracy A Foreign Office plan for the Middle East
The re-education of British public opinion The
machiavellian fallacy.

The shift in the Palestine balance of power Zionist
Bolsheviks and Jewish Fascists The oil controversy
The intrusion of the archetype.

XII. JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 128

Mr. Bevin's i8th Brumaire The Master Plan leaks out
Arrest of the Jewish Agency leaders Operations against the
settlements Passive resistance The anti-climax.

Anxious improvisations Morrison Plan and Bevin Plan

Palestine referred to U.N.O.

The lowest common denominator Terror and hypocrisy

The deportation orders The blowing-up of the King
David Hotel Haganah and Irgun.

XIII. THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 141

Britain rejects the U.N. recommendations The miracle of
Russo- American agreement Palestine becomes a test case
for U.N.O. The Marx Brothers at Lake Success.

Evacuation of British civilians Reactions of Arabs and
Jews More bombs, hangings and prison breaks The
Farran case Exodus in reverse.

xiv PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

XIV. THE CIVIL WAR 152

The showdown begins The battle of the convoys
Infiltration from the neighbouring countries Ambiguous
status of the Arab Legion British arms deliveries to Trans-
Jordan and Iraq.

Haganah goes into action From convoy defence to
punitive raids The storming of Castel The victory of
Mishmar Ha'emek The blood-bath of Deir Yassin Its
extraordinary repercussions The Arab exodus The sur-
render of Tiberias The battle for Haifa The surrender
of Jaffa The Jews take Safed, Beisan and modern Jeru-
salem They lose the Old City and five settlements.

XV. OPERATION DELUGE 163

Security chaos and administrative vacuum Palestine ex-
pelled from the Sterling Block The vanishing of the
Government's assets The closing down of the oil refineries
Railways, shipping, air transport and postal services cease
to function Operation Deluge completed.

The Jews build their skeleton Government The flood
and the Ark Formation of the Provisional State Council
The Proclamation of Independence.

GotterdSmmening in Palestine " Here goes thirty years,
gentlemen '* Increasing demoralization and corruption
Aspirins and tanks for sale Mosleyites at work The
flood of evil.

XVI. FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN 175

India compared to Palestine *' It's either them or us "
The five choices before the Labour Government Palestine
the Seventh Dominion The missed opportunity of 1945
The capitulation of common sense.

Samson among the Philistines The climate of public
opinion Its rejection of totalitarian measures The
buffers of democracy and the boons of the lesser evil.

BOOK TWO: CLOSE-UP

I. POMPEI REVERSED 190

II. DAVID AND GOLIATH 204

III. THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 233

CONTENTS XV

IV, THE END OF TERRORISM AND THE CONSOLIDATION PAGE

OF STATE AUTHORITY 245

V. PROPHETS AND PHARISEES TEL Aviv TRIVIA 255

BOOK THREE: PERSPECTIVE

I. THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 289

II. THE REBIRTH OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 311

III, BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE ? 316

IV. THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE A SUMMING-UP 324

EPILOGUE

332

English Miles
5 10 15 20 25 30

Partition boundaries according to the
UNO Resolution of Vou. 29. 1947

Allotted to Israel

Arabs. .
Railways - - - Road

BOOK ONE

BACKGROUND

" For I never knew so young a body with so old
a head." The Merchant of Venice.

PART ONE

CONCEPTION AND GESTATION

CHAPTER I

ROMANTICS AND ROUTINE

Jewry as a freak of history Freak character of the
Balfour Declaration Its motives : the subjective factor in
history Its meaning: an exercise in applied semantics
What is a " national home " ? The romantic and the
trivial planes of History : Prophets versus Civil Servants

ISRAEL, then, is a freak of history. When writing about the
events, past and present, which led to the resurrection of the
Jewish State, adjectives like " unique " and " unprecedented "
are difficult to avoid. But " unique " is a tiresome adjective,
probably because it refers to an experience which can be fitted
into no general scheme and has no claim to general validity. On
the other hand, freak phenomena are merely the extreme exten-
sions of normality. Thus the peculiarities of the Jewish character,
that apparently unique blend of pride and humbleness, spirit-
uality and cupidity, inferiority complex and over-compensation,
calculated cunning and dripping sentimentality, could probably
be induced by a team of determined psychiatrists in any com-
munity kept for no more than a couple of generations under hot-
house conditions approximating those of the Polish ghettoes.

The Jewish neurosis is an extreme response to an extreme
" stimulus of penalizations " to use Professor Toynbee's expres-
sion ; like symptoms can be found in the Parsees in India, the
Armenians in Turkey and in any orphanage or institution for
problem children* 1 Similarly, the mystical attachment of the
Jews to their ancient country must be regarded as an extreme case
of the homesickness of expatriate communities, mixed with man-
kind's archaic yearning for a lost paradise, for a mythological
Golden Age, which is at the root of all Utopias from Spartacus'
Sun State to Herzl's Zionism. And finally, anti-semitism is merely
a specific form of xenophobia determined by religious, social and

1 Cf. the oriental proverb about one Greek being worse than ten Jews, and
one Armenian worse than ten Greeks.

3

4 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

economic factors. Thus analysed down into its prime factors,
the Jewish fate seems no longer unique. It is nevertheless unique
in the sense that it displays certain human tendencies in an unpre-
cedented concentration, and carries human destiny to unheard-of
extremes. For, after all, there is no other example in history of
a community which has been chased round the globe quite as
much, which has survived its own death as a nation by two
thousand years, and which, in between autos-da-fe and gas
chambers, kept praying at the proper season for rain to fall in a
country on which they have never set eyes, and drinking toasts
to " Next year in Jerusalem " during the same astronomical
stretch of time, with the same untiring trust in the super-
natural.

To put it in a different way : we know that at some point
quantity changes into quality, and the " very rare " into the
" unique " According to the teachings of the quantum theory,
if a golf ball were suddenly to start off towards the hole without
being hit, this would not constitute a miracle but merely what is
called a " statistically highly improbable event ". In the same
way the rebirth of Israel is not a miracle, but it is, there is no
getting around it, a " statistically highly improbable event ".

Now an improbable event is bound to lead to further improb-
able events, until the area of the disturbance gradually returns to
normality. The ball which started rolling towards the hole on its
own upsets the routine of the whole tournament. ' The appearance
of the freak-movement of Zionism on the political scene was bound
to produce a series of freak-reactions. It culminated in the famous
Balfour Declaration, one of the most improbable political docu-
ments of all time. In this document one nation solemnly promised
to a second nation the country of a third.

No second thoughts can diminish the originality of this pro-
cedure. It is true that the Arabs in Palestine lived under Turkish
overlordship ; but they had been living there for centuries, and
the country was no doubt " theirs " in the generally accepted sense
of the word. It is true that the Arabs had vast underpopulated
territories at their disposal and the Jews had none ; that the Arabs
were a backward, the Jews a forward, people ; and that the latter
claimed to have received that country three thousand years earlier
from God himself who had only temporarily withdrawn it from
them. But arguments of this nature had never before in history
induced an act of State of a comparable kind.

ROMANTICS AND ROUTINE 5

The Balfour Declaration was in due time endorsed by the
League of Nations, which charged Great Britain to carry out her
promise by acting as a Mandatory Power under international
supervision. In plain language this meant that the League
requisitioned Palestine from its owners to provide the Jews with
a permanent abode, and appointed Britain to act as billeting
officer.

It is of particular importance to bear in mind the freak-
character of this whole series of events, for it is the key to the
understanding of all that followed. It was unprecedented that a
race should lose its country, and hence its physical nationhood,
and yet preserve its identity through two millenniums. It was
unprecedented that the "fossilized society " (to borrow another of
Professor Toynbee's terms) of Jews, immured in a hostile environ-
ment, should reawaken to national consciousness and produce
a modern political movement, like green shoots breaking from
a petrified forest. It was unprecedented that fifty-two nations
should agree to create for a fifty-third a " National Home ".
And lastly, the term " National Home " itself was a complete
novelty, a term with a curiously sentimental ring, undefined by
international law and yet the object of an international treaty of
far-reaching importance.

Any departmental head in any foreign ministry in the world
could have foretold that to embark on such an entirely unorthodox
and romantic experiment meant asking for no end of trouble.
And to crown the amateurishness of the whole thing, the Mandate
contained two obviously contradictory promises made in one
breath, : the establishment of a National Home for Jews in an
Arab country, but without prejudice to the rights of the Arabs.

There exists a voluminous literature discussing from all
possible angles the exact meaning of the Balfour Declaration and
the motives which prompted the Lloyd George Cabinet of 1917
to issue it. Both questions are of more than technical interest,
for they show in rare concentration the importance of what one
may call the subjective factor in history as distinct from the
objective, social-economics factors which historic materialism
claims to be alone operative.

Regarding the motives which led to the launching of this

6 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

extraordinary document, we have the testimony of Mr. Lloyd
George himself. 1

" In the evidence he gave before us, Mr. Lloyd George, who
was Prime Minister at that time, stated that, while the Zionist
cause had been widely supported in Britain and America before
November 1917, the launching of the Balfour Declaration at
that time was * due to propagandist reasons ' ; and he outlined
the serious position in which the Allied and Associated Powers
then were. The Rumanians had been crushed. The Russian
Army was demoralized. The French Army was unable at the
moment to take the offensive on a large scale. The Italians
had sustained a great defeat at Caporetto. Millions of tons of
British shipping had been sunk by German submarines. No
American divisions were yet available in the trenches. In this
critical situation it was believed that Jewish sympathy or the
reverse would make a substantial difference one way or the
other to the Allied cause. In particular Jewish sympathy would
confirm the support of the American Jewry, and would make it
more difficult for Germany to reduce her military commitments
and improve her economic position on the Eastern front."

The Zionist leaders, according to Lloyd George's evidence,
promised " to do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support
throughout the world to the Allied cause. They kept their
word/' 2

It was an honest deal. On the face of it it looks as if it had
been a cynical deal. In fact the opposite is true ; if the deal is
to be qualified at all, it was a romantically sentimental, and not a
cynical one. The men responsible for it, such as Lloyd George,
Lord Balfour, President Wilson, General Smuts, were Bible
lovers. They were profoundly attracted by the Old Testament-
arian echoes which the Zionist movement carried ; and they had
historic imagination. If one reads Lloyd George's evidence care-
fully, one is led to suspect that he deliberately overstates the
opportunistic motivations of the Balfour Declaration as if
trying to cover up the romantic impulses behind it. Never in
history has the British Empire committed itself to an action of
similar grandeur " for propagandist reasons ". The phrase sounds
like an excuse, a rationalization, of an act dangerously outside the

1 Palestine Royal Commission Report, H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1937,
p. 17. (The page numbers refer throughout to the 1946 reprint.)
* Ibid. p. 17.

ROMANTICS AND ROUTINE 7

cautious routine of diplomacy. The whole thing was unorthodox,
unpolitic, freakish. For one glorious moment the British War
Cabinet assumed the role of messianic providence. Politics was
lifted from the trivial to the romantic plane.

3

That moment did not last long. Civil servants, colonial
officers, military administrators are not at home on the romantic
plane. The Balfoui; Declaration was a statement of poetic
inspiration ; translated into administrative prose it sounded be-
wildering and impracticable. The wording of the document itself
already betrayed a considerable uneasiness on the -part of its
authors. Why the curious expression " National Home ", whose
vagueness was bound to lead to endless complications and dis-
putes ? The Royal Commission' comments :

" We have been permitted to examine the records which
bear upon the question and it is clear to us that the words ' the
establishment in Palestine of a National Home ' were the out-
come of a compromise between those Ministers who contem-
plated the ultimate establishment of a Jewish State and those
who did not." I

An ambiguous diplomatic phrase based on a compromise of
this type is called in French a " negre blanc ". The concept of a
National Home was, from its beginning, a white negro. It was
a logical misfit and an administrative absurdity. It could be made
to appear white or black according to the political constellation of
the moment, for nobody knew what it really meant. To General
Smuts, who had been a member of the Imperial War Cabinet at
the time when the Declaration was launched, the national home
meant " in generations to come a great Jewish state rising there
once more ". 2 To Mr. Winston Churchill it meant something
quite different :

" When it is asked, what is meant by the development of a
Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is
not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants
of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the
existing Jewish Community ... in order that it may become

1 Royal Commission Report, p. 18. a Ibid. p. 18.

8 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on
grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride." 1

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Government in 1930 reiterated
Mr. Churchill's interpretation that a National Home in Palestine
was a different thing from the converting of the whole of Palestine
into a National Home, and issued a White Paper which the Jews
called a Black Paper, and which practically put an end to all
Zionist hopes. The Arabs triumphed. The Jews protested.

Three months later the negro once more changed colour. In
February 1931 Mr. Ramsay MacDonald published a letter to
Dr. Weizmann which seemed a complete reversal of the policy
announced in October 1930.

In May 1939, six months after Munich, Mr. Chamberlain's
Government issued another White Paper in which the National
Home was interpreted as meaning that the Jews were to remain
a permanent minority in Palestine, deprived of the right of immi-
gration and of the right to the free purchase of land. This
interpretation was rejected by the Mandatory Commission of the
League of Nations and provoked the wrath of the opposition, and
particularly of the Labour Party. Mr. Churchill called it a " base
betrayal, a petition in moral bankruptcy J> ; Mr. Morrison went
one better by describing it as "a cynical breach of faith, a breach
of British honour ". 2

Five years later, in 1944, the Labour Party's Annual Con-
ference declared that " there is surely neither hope nor meaning
in a * Jewish national home ' unless we are prepared to let the
Jews, if they wish, enter this tiny land in such numbers as to
become a majority ". Another year later the Labour Party took
power and promptly adopted a policy which, according to its own
definition, deprived the National Home of both hope and mean-
ing. According to the school of semantics to which, Mr. Bevin
belongs, a home was defined as a place which you are not per-
mitted to enter. It is an absurd story which could serve as an
illustration of the disastrous effects of that crime unlisted in
international law, the abuse of words.

The story could equally well be told from the Arab angle, and
would sound equally absurd. To the Arabs it was promised that
nothing would be done in Palestine to " prejudice their civil and

1 Royal Commission Report, p. 24.
2 Debate in the House of Commons, April 26-27, 1939.

ROMANTICS AND ROUTINE 9

religious rights ". It is true that " political rights " were not
expressly mentioned in the Mandate, but who could earnestly
assume that this omission would imply the Arabs of Palestine
being deprived of them ? On at least three occasions in thirty
years the Arabs had been promised the setting up of a legislative
body, the cessation of Jewish immigration and a check on Jewish
economic expansion ; but each time the negro had changed colour
again before the promise was implemented. The Jews found it
absurd to be forcibly debarred entry into their so-called " Home " ;
the Arabs found it absurd that they should be granted the right
of self-determination only after foreign Jews had become a
majority in their country. There can be no doubt that the Jews
were harder and more tragically hit by these oscillations of policy
than the Arabs. But we are not at present concerned with the
humanitarian aspect of the problem. The point under discussion
is the clash between the romantic plane of history on which the
Balfour Declaration and the renaissance of Israel were originally
conceived, and the trivial plane of political routine.

4

The history of Palestine during the thirty years of British
Mandate moved along the line of intersection of these two planes.
British rulers and Zionist pioneers lived in different worlds, spoke
a different language, obeyed a different psychology. The Jews
thought in terms of the prophecies of Isaiah ; of Tolstoi, Marx
and Herzl ; of the miraculous rebirth of Israel. The British
Colonial administrators thought in the terms of the British Colonial
Administration. Isaiah, Tolstoi and the Jewish renaissance were
cloud-cuckoo-land to them. Most of them had seen service in
India, the Sudan or elsewhere in the empire ; they knew how to
build roads, keep public security on a reasonable level, and how
to cope with native populations. They had, in their earlier career,
often come across individual cranks or religious sects who lived
in cloud-cuckoo-land, and they knew that the correct attitude was
discreetly to ignore them unless they became obnoxious. In
Palestine these unhappy administrators were faced with a new
and unprecedented situation. Here the romantic crank-idea was
embodied in the international constitution of the country. Their
task was to help " the establishment of a national home ", what-
ever that might mean.

10 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The guiding principle of every colonial administration is
maintenance of the status quo, mitigated by such slow and gentle
reforms as are absolutely necessary. In Palestine Civil Servants
were called upon to carry out a revolution by transforming a
predominantly Arab country into a Jewish one. To conceive
such an idea, for propagandistic or other reasons, in a Cabinet
meeting in London was one thing. To project it from the
romantic onto the trivial plane, to translate it into humdrum
administrative routine, was another. It would have necessitated
a team of men with Byronic idealism and Lawrentian imagination.
But the men who ruled Palestine were colonial servants of the
average type. The impossible stipulations of the task before them
acted as a permanent irritant.

Without that absurd National Home business Palestine would
have been a country easy to rule and pleasant to live in. For the
Jews Zionism was a messianic inspiration. For the British
Administration it was simply a damned nuisance.

CHAPTER II

THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM
THE APEX

Gentlemen in morning-coats arrive The Jewish Agency :
rise of a shadow government Attractions and repulsions
in the psychological triangle The weight of impondera-
bilia The Marxist view of Palestine history The
" diabolic " view The " psycho-somatic " view.

The facts : policy on two levels Indecision and un-
conscious bias Public security and the lures of appease-
ment Summary

THE psychological conflict began almost immediately after the
completion of the British conquest of Palestine. The country was
under military rule, exercised by the O.E.T.A. (Occupied Enemy
Territory Administration), headed by Sir Ronald Storrs, later
Governor of Jerusalem, and one of the most subtle and determined
opponents of the Zionist enterprise. While the inexperienced
military administrators were still trying somehow to sort out the
muddle inevitable in a freshly occupied territory, a most curious
and, from a regimental point of view, unprecedented body de-
scended upon them from London. It called itself the Zionist
Commission, and was found, to the general dismay, to be officially
sponsored by His Majesty's Government. Since the creation of
the world, military administrations have hated the interference of
civilian bodies, even if these belonged to their own people and
Government. In this case, however, the civilians in question
were neither members of the Government nor even British ; they
were a body of Jewish gentlemen in top-hats and morning-coats,
with unpronounceable names and peculiar accents. These strange
visitors at once put forward the most extraordinary demands,
such as that they should participate in the military administra-
tion ; that they should select, and supplement the pay of, Jewish
candidates for the Police ; that they should be allowed their own
military defence force, and that Hebrew should be recognized as
an official language.

12 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The impact of this meteoric burst from the romantic plane
in the British officers' mess may be imagined. It is described with
gentle irony in the Royal Commission's Report :

" One unhappy result of this situation was that some of the
Civil Servants in Palestine did not, as in the United Kingdom
or in India, stand entirely aloof from religious faction or political
strife, but found themselves in some cases forced into the
position of partisans to represent the Arab cause. There was
at the time no one else who could represent their case, while
the Zionist Commission was touring the country." J

This first contact between the British Administration and the
Zionist bodies foreshadowed the whole future development, the
chronic clash between the two incompatible planes.

Article 4 of the Mandate had stipulated that

" an appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public
body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the
Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other
matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national
home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine,
and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist
and take part in the development of the country. The Zionist
Organization . . . shall be recognized as such agency."

This stipulation was another white negro. The existence of
an independent public body with the function to " advise ",
" cooperate ", " assist " and " take part " in the business of
government was a permanent headache for the rulers of the
country ; it gradually became an obsession and ended in perse-
cution 'mania. For within a few years the Jewish Agency, by force
of circumstances, had developed into a shadow Government, a
state within the State. It controlled the Jewish economic sector
of the country, it had its own hospitals and social services, it ran
its own schools, its own intelligence service with virtually all
Jewish Government officials as voluntary informers, and con-
trolled its own para-military organization, the famous Haganah,
nucleus of the future Army of Israel.

There were two possible ways of looking at this situation.
One could regard the Jewish Agency and its institutions as the

1 Op. cit. p. 115. The Royal Commission's Report, most of which was
written by Sir Reginald Coupland, is probably the only historical classic in
English letters published by H.M. Stationery Office.

THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM THE APEX 13

embryo of the future Jewish State growing in the Mandatory
Administration's womb. Or one could regard it as a cancer
growth spreading through the tissues of the legal Government.
But pregnancy is an uncomfortable condition. Even the minority
among the Government personnel sympathetic to Zionism were
bound to regard the existence of this Jewish shadow Government
and shadow army as a constant administrative nightmare.

Other psychological factors contributed to the steady worsening
Df relations between British Administration and Zionist bodies.
The Jews were justly proud of their pioneer achievements, of the
rapid transformation of r. derelict country of empty deserts and
malaria-infested swamps into an oasis with a quasi-utopian social
structure. The collective settlements in the Jezreel valley, in
Sharon and Galilee, where people lived in messianic communities,
where the use of money was banned and Socialism was practised
.n its purest form, represented quite unique feats of social plan-
ning. But achievement is not necessarily accompanied by
nodesty, particularly if it is systematically exploited by propa-
ganda, both for political purposes and for collecting funds. All
foung pioneer countries have a tendency to self-congratulatory
Doastfulness, a tendency which contrasted most unhappily with
:he British cant of understatement and mumbling self-restraint.
Even though he recognized the Jews' achievements, the average
Briton in Palestine could not help loathing what he regarded as
[ewish conceit and showing off, while the average Jew could not
ielp regarding his British rulers as cold, hostile prigs, if not worse.

This mutual aversion was paralleled by the traditional and
spontaneous attraction which the Arab way of life holds for the
englishman. It is the result of a number of converging psycho-
ogical factors : the lure of the desert, of a lackadaisical, tradition-
ilist form of life, of nomad romanticism, courtesy and hospitality.
To these must be added the Lawrence-cult of a certain type- of
British Colonial official, and, on a different level, the common
iddiction of Arab and Englishman to the status quo, their common
dislike of violent change, of any kind of bustling efficiency. In
short, the natural affinity' between Arab and Englishman was
matched by the spontaneous aversion between Englishman and
Palestinian Jew. " Somehow we like the Arabs even though they
ight us and we dislike the Jews even if our interests run together ",
:onfessed a sincere and pro-Zionist Englishman.

According to the Royal Commission's Report, in 1936, at a

14 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

time when Hebrew had been officially and de facto the language
of the Jews in Palestine for almost twenty years, out of 270 British
officers in the First Division of the Civil Service 20 could speak
both Arabic and Hebrew, 106 could speak Arabic, and 6 Hebrew. 1
These figures express more forcibly than any political arguments
the lack of interest shown by the British bureaucracy in the Zionist
revival. Relations between the Administration and the Jewish
bodies were mostly hostile, sometimes cooperative, always cold
and distrustful. Social contact was entirely lacking. At the last
semi-official British reception which this writer attended in 1945
a big after-dinner party given by the British Council in
Jerusalem of the hundred-odd guests present, about one-half
were Arabs, one-half English and three were Jews.

The social structure of the Arab and Jewish communities
increased this trend. The Arabs in Palestine had a feudal class
with old and extremely attractive traditions of manners and hos-
pitality. The Jews had no aristocracy and no patrician bourgeoisie,
only a homogeneous lower-middle-class of Eastern European
small-town origin. They drank no cocktails, they rarely relaxed, and
they had no social graces. The results are summed up in a remark
by a candid British official : " There are two societies in Jeru-
salem, not three. One is Anglo- Arab and the other is Jewish.'
The two just can't mix." 2

If the average British Civil Servant in Palestine tried at least
not to let his sympathies and aversions interfere with the carrying
out of his duties, his wife felt under no such obligation of restraint.
She loathed the sweating crowds of Tel Aviv and loved strolling
through the Arab shuks; she found the Jewish settlements
hideous, the deportment of the young Jewesses in bloomers
deplorable, the wives of Jewish Agency officials with whom she
occasionally had to go to tea vulgar and boring, and Zionism in
general a rather unmentionable subject. And as the social climate
in all colonial countries is made by women, the distaste of the
Palestine version of the mem-sahib for all things Jewish would
have had its steady, insidious effect on the men, even if the other
factors mentioned had not already impressed upon them a marked,
though not always fully conscious, anti- Jewish and pro-Arab bias.

There were of course remarkable exceptions. At least three
among the High Commissioners of Palestine, Lord Plumer, Sir

1 Royal Commission Report, p. 120.
2 R. H. S. Grossman, Palestine Mission. T^nndnn rn^

THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM THE APEX 15

Arthur Wauchope and Lord Gort, were men in the great tradition
of the British Colonial Administration, painstakingly fair. If not
always capable of a full understanding of Jewish psychology, they
made up for it by truly Christian tolerance and patience. One
of the first Chief Secretaries of the Palestine Government, Sir
Wyndham Deedes, became after his retirement a fervent supporter
of the Zionist cause ; a number of other leading Civil Servants,
though often the target of Jewish hostility and suspicion, did
what they could in a quiet way to counterbalance the effects of
high policy and administrative bias. But by and large, the lower
one descended in the hierarchy, the more noticeable was anti-
Jewish feeling, which on the lowest level, that of the Palestine
Police, reached scandalous proportions. With Black and Tan
veterans in leading positions, riddled with former members of
Mosley's Blackshirts, the Palestine Police was one of the most
disreputable organizations in the British Commonwealth.

In short, and once more making allowance for individual
exceptions, by the end of the 'twenties the Jewish National Home
had become, to repeat Josiah Wedgwood's sad and paradoxical
statement, " the land of anti-semitism par excellence ".

It is necessary to stress these trivial psychological factors, for
in their cumulative effect they were largely responsible for the
tragic developments to follow. In fact the fate of Israel, as that
of the Jews in general, was determined as much by psychological
as by social and economic forces. In the lagt analysis, of course,
both Jewish and Colonial-British mentality may be reducible to
historical developments. But short of going back to the Saxon
conquest and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and taking
only the period since the First World War into account, one may
plausibly defend what may be called a " psycho-somatic view of
History ". In this view which dominates the present book
events were only indirectly determined by oil policy, or by the
successive threats of Nazism and Stalinism ; and more directly
by the subjective factor in history that margin of chance,
psychological imponderabilia, ideological and irrational trends,
which orthodox determinists always tend to overlook.

In the Marxist view, Palestine was a simple problem : the
Jews were tools of British imperialist expansion at the cost of the

l6 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

oppressed native population. That the Palestine Arabs thrived
on this oppression and became the richest Moslem community
in the Middle East ; that Jewish Palestine was more socialist in
its economic structure than Soviet Russia, and that British im-
perialism would have been as happy to get rid of its " tool " as
the " tool " of its wielder, never disturbed the happy gang of
believers, until, in October 1947, Stalin became overnight the
patron saint of Zionism, whereupon the ritual of eating words,
rending of ideological garments and grovelling in counter-revolu-
tionary dust was duly performed.

-As for the Jews in Palestine, though Socialist in their majority,
they could obviously not accept the vulgar-Marxist view of their
own function in the world. Instead, they fell prey to what one
might call the " diabolic " view of British politics. If on the
Palestine postage-stamps the Hebrew lettering appeared in smaller
type than the Arabic, they saw in it the sinister influence of the
Shell Oil Company. If the wife of the Assistant Deputy Director
of the Forest and Fisheries Department snubbed the wife of a
Jewish Agency official, she must have acted on instructions from
Lady Astor's notorious Cliveden Set. Whenever Arabs rioted,
they had been paid to do so by British secret funds. Every
tongue-tied, pipe -chewing Englishman was an agent of the
Intelligence Service ; timid restraint was mistaken for hostility,
administrative muddle for diabolic design.

In fact, the main characteristic of British policy in Palestine
up to 1939 was the absence of any consistent design. This is true
both of high-level policy made in London and of the conduct of
affairs on the local level. As regards the former, the contradictory
official interpretations put upon the Balfour Declaration, the
oscillations and successive brusque reversals of policy, were a
clear indication of the embarrassment of Britain's leaders. They
had in 1917 somewhat rashly let themselves in for a romantic
adventure and did not know how to get out of it. They could
not rescind the Balfour Declaration, which had been embodied
in the League of Nations Mandate ; but they felt equally unable
to implement it. Typical of this indecision is the remark of a
top-ranking official in the Palestine Administration who, when the
Royal Commission's recommendations for partitioning the country-
were published in 1937, exclaimed in a bewildered voice : " What
a very un-English document ! Who has ever heard of a British
policy in Palestine ? "

THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM THE APEX 17

What both Jews and Arabs believed to be a " diabolic policy "
was in fact the traditional muddling-along policy, guided by some
vague notions of balancing the power of Arabs and Jews, and
maintaining as far as possible the status quo. But the whole point
of the Balfour Declaration was to upset the balance by transform-
ing Arab Palestine into a Jewish country. Hence a conservative
policy aiming at the maintenance of the status quo was implicitly
an anti-Zionist policy. " Implicitly " because London was pre-
pared to tolerate a reasonable trickle of Jewish immigration, and
merely refused active help for .quick and large-scale colonization
through appropriate legislative and administrative measures. But
what on the London level was indecision and passive unhelpful-
ness was translated on the local administrative level into active
obstruction.

Immigration was gradually strangled by more and more
restrictive regulations. Although the Mandate stipulated that the
Administration should encourage " close settlement by Jews on
the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for
public purposes ", only about 95 square kilometres of State
Domain land was allotted to the Jews out of a total of 1560 square
kilometres. l The development of Jewish industries was hampered
by the Administration's admittedly " very liberal " policy of
granting import licences for manufactured goods which could be
locally produced. The financial burden for Jewish education and
health services was left almost exclusively to the Jewish Agency,
although the Government's revenue was derived largely from the
Jewish taxpayer so that the Jews were obliged to finance
directly their own schools and hospitals, and indirectly those of
the Arabs in addition. The number of Jews employed in Govern-
ment services and in the Police was considerably below their
proportional strength. The gravest omission of the Administra-
tion, however, concerned public security.

" To-day it is evident ", the Royal Commissioners reported in
1937, "that the elementary duty of providing public security
has not been discharged. If there is one grievance which the
Jews have undoubted right to prefer, it is the absence of
security." 2

A full seven years earlier, in 1930, the Permanent Mandates
Commission of the League of Nations had stated :

1 Information supplied by the Israeli Ministry of Economics.
2 Royal Commission Report, p. 148-

C

l8 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" The charge against the Palestine Government that it has
not fulfilled by actual deeds the obligation to encourage the
establishment of a National Home has been notably reinforced
by the fact that the Government has shown it is unable to pro-
vide the essential condition for the development of the National
Home security for person and property.'*

In 1920, 1921, 1929 and finally from 1936 to 1939, Palestine
was in the throes of what were euphemistically called " disturb-
ances ". The range of this word comprised Arab violence on
any scale, from local riots to organized massacre and guerilla war-
fare. The Administration's task was of course extremely difficult
and delicate. It was caught between two antagonistic races, was
accused by both of favouring the other side ; and had to muddle
through without any clear policy being laid down for it. To
provide public security for isolated Jewish settlements surrounded
by Arab villages, or in the rabbit-warren of the old cities of
Jerusalem and Safed, was technically not an easy matter. Under
these circumstances it is understandable that the Police occa-
sionally blundered. But the dismal security record of the Palestine
Administration over a quarter of a century was more than a series
of blunders. Repeated warnings of the League of Nations
Mandatory Commission about the unsatisfactory state of public
security were rejected in a high-handed manner, and no serious
attempt was made to get at tike root of. the evil by curbing the
power of the acknowledged instigators of these periodic outbreaks,
the Grand Mufti and his dan. On this issue the verdict of His
Majesty's Royal Commissioners was so damning that in any
democratically ruled country it would have led to the immediate
resignation of the Government : " If one thing stands out clear
from the record of the Mandatory Administration, it is the leniency
with which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point
of violence and murder, has been treated. . . ." J

While Arab terrorism was treated with tolerance, the Adminis-
tration played a curious cat-and-mouse game with the Jewish
self-defence organization, Haganah, about which more will be said
kter. Yet even on this dark chapter of Britain's Mandatory record
no " diabolic " interpretation should be construed. Except in a
few isolated cases, and in the lowest ranks of the Palestine Police,
no deliberate mala fides was involved. In London there reigned
indecision and muddle ; left without clear directives, the local

1 Roval Cnmmiftsmn Ponm* r* TAT

THE TRIANGLE: VIEWED FROM THE APEX 19

administration acted according to its own lights and to its anti-
Zionist bias. It could have removed the Mufti from his post,
dissolved his "Higher Arab Committee" and replaced it by
moderate elements. But such a policy would have meant a con-
siderable upheaval. The Administration preferred to go on trying
to come to terms with the extremists, whom they believed, rightly
or wrongly, to enjoy the largest local support. The only real
stumbling-block in the way of coming to such an understanding
was Zionism. If Jewish immigration was throttled and the obliga-
tions towards the National Home were gradually whittled down,
all would be well. Nothing in the instructions from London
indicated that such a course was not contemplated. The result
of these considerations was a policy of appeasement of the Arab
extremists, carried out in the hope that sooner or later the only
obstacle to full collaboration would disappear. This attitude was
in turn interpreted by the Arabs in the over-simplified way that
the Administration welcomed Arab opposition, including violence,
to strengthen its hand against the Zionists.

Had the Administration been less blinded by emotive bias,
they might have foreseen this disastrous result of their attitude.
They should have known that a chance remark from a British
official to an Arab village mukhtar betraying some anti- Jewish
sentiment would grow in the oriental mind into a direct encourage-
ment to a pogrom. Repeatedly Arab crowds, swooping down with
knives and swords on Jewish quarters, yelled " the Government
is with us ", or even carried banners to this effect. Nothing would
be more unjust than to take this claim at its face value and to
believe that the Government really condoned murder and violence.
But the point is that the Arabs did believe that this was the
Government's intention ; and to have permitted this belief to
aprow is a valid indictment of the Mandatory Administration. To
}uote once more the Royal Commission :

". . . the official tendency in Palestine to take up a defeatist,
almost an apologetic attitude on this cardinal issue (Zionism)
had helped to foster a belief in the Arab mind that the National
Home was not an immutable point of policy and that, if Arab
resistance to it were sufficiently obstinate and forcible, the
Mandatory power might presently be worried or even frightened
into giving it up ".*

1 Ibid. p. 80.

20 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

3

It was necessary to analyse this point in some detail, for it
illustrates the importance of the psychological factor in the
gradual drift of Palestine from muddle to catastrophe. In sum-
ming up the preceding pages, several steps should be clearly
distinguished.

Firstly, a decision of great imaginative sweep is taken, and a
solemn engagement entered into, on what we call the Romantic
plane of history, where time counts in centuries and obstacles
become dwarfed from an exalted bird's-eye view.

Secondly, the process thus started is continued on the Trivial
plane of humdrum political routine. As far as Cabinet policy is
concerned, the transition from one plane to another manifests itself
in a sort of hangover after the debauch of imagination, a gradual
whittling down of the original conception, in indecision and hesi-
tation. If Lord Balfour's pronouncement sounded like a new
promise from Sinai, the subsequent interpretations of it sound
rather like the hummings and hawings of the Pharisees.

Thirdly, a further step down from the muddle and indecision
of Cabinet-level policy in London to the muddle-cum-emotional
bias (partly unconscious, partly grotesque in its human triviality)
on the Colonial Administration level. In a climate saturated by
emotion and prejudice, psychological imponderabilia assume a
fateful importance. Under their cumulative effect, ambiguous
directives acquire an unconscious twist, and storm-centres of
misunderstanding and distrust are created. These in turn react
on the next higher level, and influence Cabinet policy. A vicious
circle is started, with fateful and unforeseeable consequences.

CHAPTER III .

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT
AT THE BASE

Foundations of Israel The problem of historic justice
Various conceptions of it The variables of time and value

Only relative criteria applicable.

The sell-out of the efTendi class Legislation protect-
ing the tenant The myth of the dispossessed Arab
The mess of pottage Social structure of Arab society.

Influence of Jewish colonization on Arab development

Statistics Summary : the ethical aspects of the con-
flict The Arab case Jewish self-righteousness and
cultural isolationism

I

BY the middle 'thirties it was no longer a question whether
Zionism was a good idea or a bad idea, whether it was desirable
or not the 500,000 Jews in Palestine were no longer a political
theory but a fact. They occupied a compact portion of the land ;
and though still outnumbered by the Arabs at the rate of two to
one, they had become, in economic strength and social achieve-
ment, the senior partner in that unhappy concern. The founda-
tions of the future State of Israel had been laid. A brief analysis
of these foundations seems all the more indicated as Israel is
practically the only State in existence for which all the data for
such an analysis are on record and readily accessible.

Virtually all sovereign States have cdme into being through
some form of violent and, at the time, lawless upheaval which after
a while became accepted as a fait accompli. Nowhere in history
whether in the time of the Migrations, the Norman Conquest,
the Dutch War of Independence, or the forcible colonization of
America do we find an example of a State being peacefully born
by international agreement. In this respect, again, Israel is a freak.
It is a kind of Frankenstein creation, conceived on paper, blue-
printed in the Mandate, hatched out in the diplomatic laboratory.
But, in the last phase of its birth-process, violence was the decisive

22 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

factor ; and, as with other nations, its existence is ultimately based
on an accomplished fact at the expense of the original native
population.

The Balfour Declaration, as we said before, was a promise by
one nation to a second of the country of a third. It may be argued
as a mitigating factor that when the Arabs, by the force of British
arms, were liberated from Turkish rule, the history of the Middle
East started as it were from scratch. Palestine in 1917 was an
under-populated area of deserts and swamps ; and the leaders of
the Arabs were at the time quite willing to have it colonized by
Jews, on condition of gaining sovereignty over the remainder of
the vast liberated territories from the Indian Ocean to the Turkish
border. The Emir Feisal, son of the Caliph, even signed an agree-
ment with the Zionist leader, Dr. Weizmann, pledging cordial
cooperation between the future Arab State of Greater Syria and
the Jewish National Home. As Greater Syria never came into
existence the agreement never became valid, and the fate of
Palestine was ultimately decided by force.

The term " historic justice " is vague and undefined. Unlike
the criminal code, it has no solid frame of reference ; its axioms
and criteria depend entirely on what philosophy one adopts.
From a Darwinistic point of view, historic justice is the survival
of the fitter race at the expense of the weaker. From the point
of view of Jewish religion, Israel is the fulfilment of a promise
from Sinai, and hence an act of Divine Justice. For the legalist
it is founded on a promise from Downing Street endorsed by the
League of Nations, and hence on international law. For the
Marxist dialectician it is the replacement of a mediaeval feudal
structure by a modern socialist one, and hence in accord with the
kws of historic progress. For the philanthropist it is a haven for
a persecuted homeless race, and hence to be welcomed. For
romantic traditionalists it is the defilement of a primitive and
patriarchal pattern of life by the bustle of mechanized civilization.
And finally, from the point of view of national sovereignty and
self-determination, Israel is a historic injustice.

Each of these views is based on a different system of reference
and is surrounded by its own " universe of discourse ". If these
universes get mixed up, polemics are bound to end in a hopeless
jumble. The discussion about the problem of Palestine for the
last two decades has been a classic example of semantic confusion
aggravated by emotional bias. The fact is tW KJctrtr^ iuo*;/**

iajiji J.O.AAJU vrjun . i ins uuiMi* JL1CT AT THE BASE 23

cannot be measured by absolute standards, only by relative and
comparative scales.

As the process of history is irreversible, all judgment becomes
a function of time. Yesterday's act of violence is to-day's fait
accompli and to-morrow's legal stattis quo. Hence, the definition
of historic justice depends on which point in time is regarded as
zero hour.

Which, then, is the zero hour for Palestine ? Its forcible con-
quest by the Hebrew tribes from Canaanites, Jebusites and
Philistines ? The expulsion of the Jews from it after Bar-Kochba's
revolt in the second century ? Its conquest by Arab nomads in
the seventh, or by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth ? The
entry of Allenby's troops in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration in
one pocket and Wilson's fourteen points in the other? The
British White Paper of 1939, or the British recognition of Israel
in 1949 ?

Historic justice thus appears as a function of two variables :
the point in time chosen, and the criteria of value applied. Judg-
ment will firstly depend on how much of the past is taken into
account as evidence : whether its starting-point is the Maccabean
conquest, the rule of the Caliphs or the Battle of the Negeb. It
will, secondly, depend on the judge's views about the relative value
of the reduction of Arab infant mortality by immigrant Jewish
doctors, as compared to the Arabs' right to their own way of life
without alien interference.

The idea of justice is based on a fixed system of reference ;
the presence of the two variables of time and value turns the whole
concept of " historic justice " into a subjective and arbitrary one ;
in fact reduces it to a contradiction in terms. History cannot be
judged by the application of any rigid code of ethics ; it can only
be represented in the manner of the Greek tragedy, where the
antagonists are both right in their own terms of reference and in
their own universe of discourse. In the tragedy of Jews and
Arabs in Palestine both were in the right, and the spectator
could do no more than extend his sympathies to one party or the
other, according to his subjective values and emotional bias.

Accordingly, the analysis of the moral foundations of Israel
must be confined to a limited period e.g. from the British
conquest of Palestine to the new State's Declaration of Inde-
pendence and judgment can only be based on comparison with
other examples of the conquest of a native country by European

24 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

colonists. By these limited and relative standards the injustice
done to the Arabs of Palestine still remains an undeniable fact ;
but it will appear as a relatively mild injustice compared with
historical precedents, and the methods of Jewish colonization as
relatively fair and humane.

&

The fundamental fact about the Jewish colonization of
Palestine is that it was carried out neither by force nor by the
threat of force, but, contrary to popular belief, with active Arab
connivance. No Arab was ever forced to sell his land whether
it was the estate of a rich effendi, or mashcta land, i.e. the collective
property of a village. Nor is it correct to regard the Arabs as
naive victims of the lure of Jewish gold. Arab political propa-
ganda thundered ceaselessly against the sale of land to Jews. At
the same time, the policy of the Mandatory Administration was
deliberately aimed at discouraging such sales by administrative
and legislative measures of increasing severity.

The first British Transfer of Land Ordinance dates from 1920 ;
it was amended in 1921 ; became in 1929 the Protection of
Cultivators Ordinance, which again was amended in 1932 and in
subsequent years ; the last Land Transfer law dates from 1940.
The one exclusive purpose of this long series of legislative acts
was to protect the Arab farmer and tenant against the conse-
quences of land sales to the Jews, either rashly undertaken by the
proprietor himself, or by big landowners over the tenant's head.
The first of these ordinances prohibited the transfer of land to
" others than residents in Palestine " ; the second added the
proviso that consent to the sale should only be given after the
Director of Lands was " satisfied that any tenant in occupation
will retain sufficient land in the district or elsewhere for the
maintenance of himself and his family ". The subsequent
ordinances were designed to cover any possibljg loopholes, to
make the eviction of tenants on land sold by the owner impossible,
and to prevent by all legal means the creation of a dispossessed
landless Arab proletariat. In the last of these ordinances, dated
February 1940, Jews were debarred from acquiring land in 63 per
cent of the area of Palestine, and restricted in 32 per cent ; in its
practical effects the ordinance amounted to the prohibition of the
purchase of land by Jews in 95 per cent of their National Home.

The Palestine Mandate had imposed upon the British Adminis-

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 25

tration the dual obligation to facilitate the " close settlement by
Jews on the land " and at the same time to safeguard " the rights
and position of other sections of the population " The Land
Transfer Acts were exclusively concerned with the second of these
stipulations to the more and more complete neglect of the first,
until, in the end, Palestine became in 1940 the only country in the
world, besides National Socialist Germany, in which Jews were
denied the right to acquire land. The official justification for this
series of laws of increasing rigour was the protection of the Arab
tenant-farmer against displacement. In fact, however, the " land-
less Arab ", who so prominently figured in anti-Zionist propa-
ganda, was more a political slogan than a reality. According to
the official reports of the Palestine Administration, up to the ist
of January 1936 altogether 664 valid claims for resettlement were
received from Arab tenants who had become dispossessed by the
land being sold over their heads. In 1936 altogether nine valid
claims for Government tenancies were received from landless
Arabs, in 1937 six claims, and from then on the Administration
was able to report to the Mandatory Commission that no further
claims had been put forward.

It should be repeated, then, that the Jews acquired the
stretches of land which became the economic and strategic founda-
tion of their State not by force, but by free consent of the owners :
Governmental legislation was exclusively designed to safeguard
owners' and tenants' interests. The Arabs sold voluntarily, and
had the fullest possible protection against acting rashly or being
taken advantage of. If despite all warnings and restrictions they
persisted in selling, they did it with open eyes.

Was it then a repetition of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob
for a mess of pottage ? As far as the feudal landowners are
concerned the answer is undoubtedly yes. The structure of Arab
society in Palestine never emerged from a state of mediaeval
feudalism. At its top stood a small aristocracy of landowners, a
typically Levantine elite, grown up in the traditions of the decaying
Turkish Empire of whose corrupt effendi class they formed the
Palestine branch. Many of them had served as officers in the
Turkish Army ; they had been educated in Cairo or Beirut, had
acquired the outward polish of European culture, mainly in the
form of familiarity with the works of Maupassant and Claude
Farrere, and were living, mostly as absentee landowners, on the
proceeds of their domains. These few families and their clans

26 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of more distant relatives and retainers played the part of the
political parties and groupings in modern countries. The Hus-
seinis, the Nashashibis, the Khalidis and about half a dozen other
clans held the country under their complete economic and political
sway. They led the opposition against Zionism, and at the same
time sold their land to the Jews, through middlemen, at high
profits. In 1948 it was the same effendi class which called their
followers to a holy war against the Jews, and when the first shots
were fired sneaked away to Beirut, leaving the masses leaderless
and thereby sealing the fate of Arab resistance in the civil war.
The effendis were the political leaders, administrators and vocal
chords of Arab Palestine. If they sold their birthright for a mess
of pottage they could not claim to have acted in ignorance as
Esau did.

As in the neighbouring Arab countries, the Third Estate
carried as yet no political weight. The Arab middle-class of pro-
fessional men, business men and newspaper editors were a thin
layer sandwiched in between the feudal landlords on the one hand,
with, on the other t the politically illiterate but easily fanaticized
mass of hard-working fellaheen and the leisurely drones of the
shuks.

The second main source of Jewish land acquisition was
mashaa land, representing the communal property of the fellaheen
of an Arab village. It was mostly land which the villagers were
unable to cultivate for lack of irrigation or tractors, or because of
their reluctance to adopt modern methods of cultivation and their
lack of capital for doing so. By selling a portion of their waste
land, the fellaheen were able either to improve the exploitation of
the rest, or to start some kind of a business in town.

The paradox of a considerable portion of the land passing
gradually into Jewish possession while at the same time the
number of " dispossessed " Arabs remained insignificant, has its
simple explanation in the fact that most of the land acquired by
the Jews, both from the great landowners and from the villagers,
had been uncultivated before. Thus the two main continuous
stretches of territory, the coastal plain and the valley of Jezreel,
which became the material foundation of the Jewish State, had
been, before the arrival of the Jews, mostly a wilderness of sand-
dunes, marshes and stony desert, with here and there a malaria-
infested warren of mud huts or a village in ruins, whose population
had died out of disease. The expansion of Jewish colonization

did not cause a shrinkage of Arab-cultivated land, nor a displace-
ment or impoverishment of Arab farmers, but the direct opposite.

A few statistical figures may illustrate the process. 1 The
Jewish area of citrus culture Palestine's main export ex-
panded from 10,000 dunums in 1922 to 155,500 in 1937. The
Arab citrus plantations expanded in the same period almost to the
same extent from 22,000 to 144,000 dunums.

The Arab area of fruit-trees in hill districts which in pre-
Zionist days were regarded as uncultivable, increased from 332,000
dunums in 1931 to 832,000 in 1942.

Generally speaking, agricultural production per head of the
total non- Jewish population rose (in round figures) from 4 : los.
in 1922 to 7 in 1938. This in spite of the fact that in 1922
Arab Palestine was almost purely agricultural, while in 1938 a
considerable sector of the population had migrated to the towns,
so that agricultural production per capita should normally have
gone down instead of which it increased by more than 50 per
cent. This spectacular increase both of the area of land cultivated
by Arabs, and of its yield, was due firstly to the capital flowing
into Arab hands from Jewish land purchases ; 2 secondly, to the
rapid growth of the internal market for agricultural products
through Jewish immigration ; thirdly, to the fall of agricultural
taxes from 12! per cent of the revenue to 3! per cent of the
revenue, made possible by the prosperous state of the Palestine
exchequer thanks to the Jewish taxpayer; and finally, to the
modernization of primitive Arab agriculture and the rapid decrease
in animal and pknt pests under the influence of modern Jewish
agricultural methods.

If one revisited Palestine at intervals of five or ten years, as
the author had occasion to do between 1926 and 1948, one was
struck each time by the apparent jumps both in the progress of
reclaiming the waste land which had lain fallow and deserted
during the centuries of Turkish misrule, and in the rise of the
living standard of the population. This progress was even more
conspicuous in the case of the Arabs, who had started from a
lower level. The transition from mud huts to stone houses, from

1 See Memorandum on the Influence of Jewish Colonization on Arab Develop-
ment in Palestine, Jerusalem, 1947 ; Statistical Handbook of the Middle East*
Jerusalem, 1944 ; and the Royal Commission's Report.

2 Before Zionist colonization started the price of land ranged from P$
to Pi5 per dunum ; in 1944 it averaged E%o per dunum.

28 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

the rabbit-warren of Old Jaffa to the spacious avenues of the
modern town represented a more striking contrast than the more
homogeneous growth of Tel Aviv or the growth of the Jewish
agricultural settlements, which, impressive though they were,
remained more or less true to the same style and pattern.

Parallel with this growth of Arab prosperity, however, grew
an urban industrial proletariat, a far less welcome sight to the
tourist's eye. Previously, Arab poverty had been hidden inside
the windowless, one-room mud huts (housing parents, children
and donkey) of the villages, which looked picturesque and unreal
from a distance. Now it was displayed in the slums of industrial
towns like Haifa, where a whole suburb of shacks built of rusty
petrol tins dismayed and shocked the visitor. Inevitably in Arab
Palestine, as in other parts of the world, a slow drift had set in
from village to town, from farming to industrial employment, from
the monotony of rural life to the cinema and cafe. But this was
not a consequence of any forced displacement caused by the Jews,
nor even directly connected with the founding of Jewish industries,
which did not employ Arab labour. It was simply the industrial
age slowly dawning on Palestine, and was only indirectly con-
nected with Zionist colonization which, through influx of capital
and competitive example, inspired the beginnings of Arab in-
dustrialization. The Arab drift from village to town coincided
with the inverse movement of the Jews' return to the land. This
curious cross-current of tendencies in the two races was a historical
chance, and not a result of conscious scheming. Similar chance
constellations were, as will be seen, to play an important part in
the birth of Israel.

To sum up. Had Jewish immigration been confined to the
towns and to industrial occupations, the Jewish State would never
have come into existence. The decisive factor was the conquest
of the land, both in the metaphoric and literal sense. Without
possession of the strategic key positions along the coastal belt and
in the valley of Jezreel, and of the frontier outposts scattered over
Galilee, Judaea and the Negeb, the Jews would have been unable
to defend themselves. Without their achievement of transforming
desert, swamp and dune into the material basis of the National
Home, they would have had no moral claim to its possession.
They had started building their country from scratch, in the
wilderness, which had been unexploited by its native owners and
had been willingly yielded by them against material benefits,

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 29

despite every warning and legal and administrative hindrance.
The rich sold their land out of cupidity, putting greed above the
national interest which they purported to represent. The villagers
sold their land because they put their well-understood material
interest above political considerations which were alien to them.
They were capable of wild outbursts of religious fanaticism when
the village priest chose to preach holy murder in his Friday sermon
in the mosque ; but as natives of a feudal country which had been
somnolescent under Turkish rule since the middle ages, they had
never acquired a national consciousness in the political sense.
We are always apt to forget that nationalism is a product of a
relatively recent, post-feudal European development. Neither
clan-allegiance, nor religion, nor hatred of the stranger, is suffi-
cient to give structural coherence and the capacity of coordinated
action to a people. The Arabs of Palestine were an amorphous
mass peace-loving, tradition-bound, illiterate, divided by blood
feuds and clan rivalry ; time and their feudal rulers deprived them
of their chance of becoming a nation.

Into this stagnant country the Jews burst like an explosion.
They gained control of the land, not by force or fraud, but because
they were the harbingers of the twentieth century in a country
which had virtually stood still since the fifteenth. They did not
dispossess or victimize or exploit its native owners, but substituted
themselves for the former by virtue of a historic fatality. They
did not come, as other Europeans had come to dark continents
before them, with shotguns, glass beads and fire water ; nor with
missionaries either. They meant no harm to the Arabs ; nor were
the benefits which the latter reaped intentional on the part of the
Jews. They came pressed by persecution and by hunger for a
land of their own ; and though the methods of their conquest
were ethically less objectionable than any previous conquest in
history, this was due more to the force of circumstance than to
subjective merit. They were the relatively decent and humane
executors of the amoral workings of history. And that is all we
have set out to prove, and thought necessary to prove, in view of
the distorted partisan accounts, both from the Jewish and anti-
Jewish sides, of the beginnings of the State of Israel.

3

To complete the picture, a few more facts should be entered
on both sides of the ethical balance-sheet of Jewish pioneering.

30 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

On the credit side mention must be made of the influence of
Zionist colonization on Arab vital statistics. After centuries of
stagnation the Arab population of Palestine doubled between
1922 and 1942 in round figures, from 600,000 to 1,200,000.
This striking development was due partly to the work of Jewish
hospitals and doctors, partly to the Government's health services
which were mainly financed by Jewish taxes, and partly to the
immigration of Arabs from neighbouring countries attracted by
Palestine's higher wages and standards of living. The following
figures will illustrate this process. 1

Infant mortality decreased between 1921 and 1939 in Trans-
jordan by 7 per cent, in Egypt by 9 per cent and in Palestine's
Moslem population by 27 per cent.

Egypt's population increased in the same period by 25 per
cent, Palestine's Moslem population by 75 per cent (Transjordan
unknown).

Within Palestine Moslem vital statistics vary in different
regions according to the density of the Jewish population in
that region, Le. the establishment of Jewish medical services.
The following table shows the interdependence of the Jewish
population figures in rural areas and Arab infant mortality
in 1937-39. The town names stand for capitals of rural sub-
districts.

Jaffa

Haifa

Ramleh

Safed

Ramallah

Bethlehem

Per cent of Jews in

71-9

52"3

22

9'9

O

total population

Arab infant mortal-
ity per thousand

81-4

118-7

114-8

177

I7I-5

176-4

live births

In terms of expenditure, the Mandatory Administration spent
on medical services in 1934-35 166,000, the Jewish Agency
350,000, while there was no expenditure by Arab organizations.
On combating malaria by the draining of marshes, the Jews had
spent up to 1935 403,000, the Palestine Government 86,500, the
Arabs nothing. Compared to the neighbouring countries, health ex-
penditure per head in 1936-37 was : Palestine 0-161 (index 100),

1 For sources cf. footnote x on n. 2*7.

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 31

Iraq 0-077 (index 47-8), Transjordan 0-051 (index si-?). 1

The general Arab standard of living rose as spectacularly as
the vital statistic figures. Between 1922 and 1939 the annual
consumption of principle commodities per head had risen by
85 per cent, and gross production in agriculture and industry per
head by 150 per cent. Wages in 1936 for Arab skilled labour in
Palestine ranged from 53. to izs. per day, for unskilled labour
from 2S. to 33. 6d. In the same year, wages in Syria ranged from
is. to 2S. 6d., and in Iraq factory labour was paid round is. a day,
regardless of qualifications. Finally, Government revenue rose
from just over i million pounds in 1921 to over 4! million pounds
in 1939-40. The flourishing finances of the Palestine exchequer
were due mainly to Jewish immigration, and benefited mainly the
Arab "sector. Thus Government expenditure on schools rose
from round 100,000 in 1931 to over 200,000 in 1939-40, in
other words it was doubled within ten years. Of this expenditure
82 per cent went to Arab schools and 18 per cent to Jewish schools,
which were mainly financed by Zionist organizations. In the
same period of ten years the number of Moslem literates rose
from 76,000, or ii per cent of the Moslem population, to 170,000,
or 18 per cent.

This last figure shows that despite all relative progress, the
cultural standard of the Arab population was still shockingly low,
particularly compared to what one may call the 200 per cent
literacy of the Jews the latter being usually at least bilingual.
The same contrast prevailed between Jewish and Arab infant
mortality, standard of living, housing conditions. The striking
percentual increases in the statistics quoted should not obscure
the fact that though considerably better off at the end than at the
beginning of the British Mandate, and rich compared to their
fellow-Arabs in neighbouring countries, the Moslems of Palestine
still lived in appalling material and cultural poverty.

1 For curiosity's sake we may quote the following statement by the Colonial
Secretary of the Chamberlain Cabinet, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, under whose
tenure of office the White Paper of 1939 was issued, and who can hardly be
suspected of Zionist sympathies :

** If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe the
Arab population of Palestine to-day would still have been round the 600,000
figure, at which it had been stable under Turkish rule. It is because the
Jews who have come to Palestine bring modern health services and other
advantages that Arab men and women who would be dead are alive to-day,
that Arab children who would never have drawn breath have been born and
grow strong,"

32 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

4

We have discussed at some length the positive aspects of the
Jewish colonizatory enterprise in its repercussions on the Arab
population. The negative aspects are more difficult to substantiate
by statistics or concrete facts. Once again we have to switch from
one historical plane to another, from a system of values expressed
in health statistics and economic standards to a different system
defined by psychological relations and cultural patterns.

We said before that, unlike other colonists, the Jews brought
no glass beads or rum ; but they brought no missionary Bibles
either. This absence of the missionary approach is a character-
istic of Zionist colonization. It bestowed considerable benefits
on the Arabs ; but these benefits were not intentional, and thereby
lost much of their moral value and their convincingness as a
political argument. The patronizing tone of Zionist propaganda
produced an effect contrary to its aim and psychologically neutral-
ized any material advantage which the Arabs derived from the
advent of the Jews. The Jews argued and proved that by develop-
ing the country's derelict wastes and industrial potential they
were not taking the Arabs' house away but adding a new storey
to it, as it were. The Arabs answered that this may or may not
be so, but that in any case they refused to have an alien nation
living " on top of them ". The Jews argued and proved that by
their building up and moving in the Arabs were much better off
than before. The Arabs answered that this may or may not be
so, but that in any case they hadn't asked the Jews to bestow
benefits on them ; and that all they wanted was to be left alone.
I have tried to sum up elsewhere this very strong and natural
reaction of the average educated Arab to Zionist arguments ; it
boils down to this :

" We don't care whether you pay and we don't care for your
hospitals and schools. You must understand that this is our
country. We want no foreign benefactors. We don't want to
be patronized. We want to live in our own way, and we want
no foreign teachers and no foreign money and no foreign habits
and no smiles of condescension and no pats on the shoulder
and no arrogance and none of your shameless women wriggling
their buttocks in our holy places. We don't, want your honey
and we don't want your sting, get that straight. Neither
your honey nor your sting. . . ."

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 33

The novel from which this speech of a member of the Arab
intelligentsia is quoted was written in 1945. A short time later,
Azzam Pasha, Secretary of the Arab League, put the Arab case in
the following words before the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry :

" The Zionist, the new Jew, wants to dominate, and he
pretends that he has got a particular civilizing mission with
which he returns to a backward, degenerate race in order to put
the elements of progress into an area which has no progress.
Well, that has been the pretension of every power that wanted
to colonize and aimed at domination. The excuse has always
been that the people are backward and that he has got a human
mission to put them forward. . . . The Arabs simply stand
and say * NO ', We are not reactionary and we are not back-
ward. Even if we are ignorant, the difference between ignor-
ance and knowledge is ten years in school. We are a living,
vitally strong nation, we are in our renaissance ; we are
producing as many children as any nation in the world. We
still have our brains. We have a great heritage of civilization
and of spiritual life. We are not going to allow ourselves to be
controlled either by great nations or small nations or dispersed
nations."

On its own level the argument is unanswerable. It is based
on the premise that every people has a right to live in its own
way, even if it is a primitive, anachronistic way which carries its
own doom. To ask whether this premise is " right " or " wrong "
is meaningless. History carries a whip in its hand, and in this
case the Jews, its traditional victim, were the whip. No effort of
humanity and understanding on their part could have possibly
hidden this fact from the native Arabs. As it happens, the
operation was less painful than in other cases, and in a crudely
material sense even beneficial to the victim. But only in this
crudely material sense. No effort on the part of the Jews could
have induced the Arabs voluntarily to acquiesce in their fate.

But the point is that the Jews hardly made any effort in that
direction at all. " The Arabs " represented for them a political
headache, not a human and moral problem. They paid lip-service
to the necessity of a mutual rapprochement, but in practice did
little about it. Palestine was their promised land, doubly promised
from Mount Sinai and Downing Street, and they came to take
possession of it as its masters. The presence of the Arabs was

34 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

a mere accident like the presence of some forgotten pieces of
furniture in a house which has been temporarily let to strangers.
They had no intention of removing them unless they got in their
way. They meant no harm to the Arabs ; all they expected of
them was to sit still and watch them taking the country over and
running it in their own efficient way to everybody's benefit.
Unlike other colonizers, they did not exploit cheap native labour ;
they simply excluded the Arabs from their own hermetically sealed
economy. This was hardly to be avoided, because one of the
fundamental aims of Zionism was to reverse the top-heavy social
pyramid of the Jews in the Diaspora ; the Jews, as a nation, must
have their own solid base of farmers and manual workers in all
spheres of production. Only the planters of the pre-Zionist
Jewish immigration employed Arab labour in their orange groves ;
but this was regarded as a betrayal of the national ideal, and the
old planters, too, were gradually forced to replace Arab by Jewish
labour. Theoretically, the Jewish trade unions were open to Jew
and Arab alike ; practically, little effort was made to attract Arab
members. Theoretically, the extreme Zionist left preached a
united front of the Arab and Jewish proletariat to liberate the
fellaheen from their feudal exploiters. In fact, however, each Jew,
Marxist or not, regarded himself as a member of the chosen race,
and the Arab as his inferior.

Except for Jewish doctors and health service personnel, who
played a considerable part in the improvement of Arab health
standards, particularly in the rural areas, the Jews took no active
steps to bring modern culture and civilization to the native popu-
lation and to narrow the gap between the two races. The material
benefits which came to the Arabs were an accidental by-product
of Jewish economic expansion. The language of the Jewish
schools and university, of books and newspapers, was Hebrew
and hence inaccessible to the Arabs. The Jews published no
books or periodicals in Arabic. The cultural life of the two com-
munities was confined to watertight compartments, as their
respective economies were. The Jews made no effort to bring
European culture to the Arab masses, nor to adapt themselves to
those aspects of oriental life which would have enriched their own
cultural pattern and at the same time made them appear less
provocatively alien to the country. They did not learn from the
Arabs to build cool and spacious houses which would fit the
climate and landscape ; they brought with them their architecture

THE TRIANGLE: THE CONFLICT AT THE BASE 35

of the Polish small town and of German functionalism of the
'twenties. Their dress, food, manners and general way of life
were transplanted like a prefabricated pattern from their lands of
origin. Some of these were improvements in the country's way
of life ; others unfitting and in bad taste. There was no cultural
symbiosis between the two races. The Jews came as conquerors.
It was a fair and humane conquest, but a conquest nevertheless.

Most of these things were objectively inevitable. The illiterate
Arab masses, living under the complete spiritual sway of the
village priest, were impervious to the voice of the twentieth century.
They had no desire to organize themselves into trade unions, nor
to study Marxist pamphlets and fight feudalism. The Jews were
a minority, and to assert themselves against a hostile and backward
majority they had to show their physical strength or perish. Their
Marxist phrases and their talk of mutual understanding were
bound to remain lip-service, for had they conceded the subjective
justice of the Arab case they would have had to renounce their
aim. Short of that, they could in fact do very little to alter the
course of events. Nevertheless, had they shown a little more
discretion and less self-righteousness, more adaptability and a
broader interpretation of their pioneer mission the effort, even
if rejected, even if ultimately hopeless, would have made a great
difference, particularly for the later internal development of the
State of Israel. For the narrow and self-satisfied cultural isola-
tionism with which Israel became imbued during this period of
pre-natal conditioning has left a strong mark on its character and
spirit as will be seen later in more detail.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIANGLE: THE JEWISH ANGLE

The pre-Zionist community The old settlers Their
warning example Planned socialized character of Zionist
colonization Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoi and the Bible
Begging bowls and high finance Summary : the pre-
natal conditioning of a nation

WE have discussed a number of aspects of the Zionist venture
which made it an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of
colonizatory enterprises. The last and probably most important
aspect remains to be mentioned : the planned, collective, national-
ized character of this colonization.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century a steady
trickle of Jewish immigrants had come into the country. They
were the forerunners of modern Zionism, and most of them came
to the Holy Land drawn by a religious, not a national, ideal. Some
settled in the ghetto of Old Jerusalem, subsisted on charity, and
spent their life in prayer. Others became planters ; their land
and capital were provided by Jewish philanthropic societies, of
which the most important was the Jewish Colonization Association
(I.C.A.) financed by "the Baron ", Edmond de Rothschild. These
old settlers or "I.C.A. colonists" were not Zionists in the political
sense. They were tolerated by the Turks, on friendly terms with
the Arabs, and had become Levantines in their way of living.
They employed Arab hired labour at first because no Jewish
labour was available, and later because Arab labourers were
cheaper and had no troublesome ideas about trade unions, Zionism
and Socialism. They viewed political Zionism with suspicion and
disfavour, and feared that a large influx of Jewish immigrants with
political pretensions would endanger their good - neighbourly
relations with the Arabs.

When, in 1903, His Majesty's Government offered the Zionist
Organization the territory of Uganda in British East Africa for the
establishment of a Jewish State, a great controversv hrnfe** nut i

THE TRIANGLE: THE JEWISH ANGLE 37

Jewry between the " Ugandists ", who were in favour of accepting
the offer, and their opponents, who insisted that the Jewish
National Home could only be in Palestine. It is a historical curi-
osity that at that time the Jews in Palestine itself, with very few
exceptions, were fanatical " Ugandists ".

". . . It was a degrading and distressing sight to see all those
people who, after all, had been the first to build up the Jewish
Palestine of that day, publicly denying and repudiating their
own past. . . . The passion for Uganda soon became associated
with a deadly hatred for Palestine. ... In the community
centres of the first Jewish colonies young men educated in the
Alliance Israelite schools denounced Palestine in the French
language, with a vain pathos and a false enthusiasm, with a
shameless contempt which I cannot describe in words. Their
only name for Palestine was * a land of corpses and graves ',
a land of malaria and eye-diseases, a land which destroys its
inhabitants. Nor was this the expression of a few individuals.
Indeed it was only a few individuals here and there in the
villages and towns who remained loyal and did not associate
themselves with the abusive and decrying masses. We know
the names of these individuals. . . . The whole of Palestine
was in a state of ferment. . . . All opposition to Uganda came
from outside of Palestine. In Zion itself all were against
Zion. ..." .

Thus writes Shlomo Zemach in his Introduction to the History
of Labour Settlement in Palestine. 1 I have mentioned this episode,
usually slurred over in Zionist histories, because it shows the
enormous difficulties which faced the first Zionist pioneers in
Palestine. They came into a semi-savage, disease-ridden land
under a corrupt and effete Turkish administration, and had to
defend their first collective settlements not only against Bedouin
robbers and the deadlier assault of typhus and malaria, but also
against the hostility and derision of the existing Jewish com-
munity. On the evidence of contemporary records, these
levantinized old settlers, who led a parasitic existence on " the
Baron's " grants, despised manual labour, quarrelled, bribed and
cheated, were a thoroughly unpleasant type. A product of the
Eastern European ghettoes, transplanted in space but not trans-
formed in spirit, they were a warning indication of the thwarting
influence of ghetto life on social character. Their example showed

1 Published by the Youth Department of the Zionist Organization, Tel
Aviv, 1945.

38 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

at the same time that religious fervour has not necessarily a
positive influence on social behaviour for even the worst crooks
in the crooked communities of Old Jerusalem or Rishon le Zion
were strictly and zealously orthodox.

2

The old settlers nevertheless fulfilled a historical function.
Their example, by effect of contrast, drove home to the Zionist
settlers how not to build their National Home. It gave birth to
" the idea of the spade ", to the revolutionary conviction that
Israel could only be reborn as a nation if it acquired a social
structure like all other nations, with a solid base of farmers and
manual labourers. The promised land could only become theirs
in the literal sense if they tilled its soil with their own hands ; " If
I spend not my strength I shall not gather the crop ", wrote the
Hebrew poet Byalik. In order to become " normalized " the
Jews had to reverse the social pyramid of the ghetto where for
centuries they had been denied access to all productive y occupa-
tions and condemned to the parasitic existence of money-lenders,
traders and middlemen. The successful reversal of the pyramid
is illustrated by the fact that in 1943, as against 55 per cent of the
population employed in manual labour, only u per cent were
engaged in commerce, the traditional occupation of the Diaspora. 1

This new insight shaped the whole character of the Zionist
movement. It gave rise to the movement for a " return to the
land " a neo-Rousseauism which, in the special case of the
Jews, was not a romantic whim, but anchored in historical neces-
sity. It gave birth to the slogan of kibbush avodah literally
translated, "the conquest of labour ". In a narrower sense this
meant the struggle to force the old settlers to employ Jewish
workmen ; in its wider sense, the effort to redirect the sons of
Polish lawyers and shopkeepers into the manual labour of direct
production.

Once this necessity was recognized, it was developed with
typical Jewish exuberance into a new cult, the almost mystic
worship of manual work, of " labour which ennobles ". This cult
in its turn became ideologically fused with Marxist class-conscious-

1 Memorandum on Jewish Development under the Mandate, submitted by
the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry,
Jerusalem, 1946.

THE TRIANGLE: THE JEWISH ANGLE 39

ness on the one hand and with Tolstoian ideas on the other, the
whole resting on traditional Jewish messianism with Palestine as
its Promised Land. This curious ideological blend, a synthesis
of national renaissance and socialist Utopia, became incarnated in
its purest form in the collective settlements, which give Israel its
unique character as a social experiment. In a less radically purist
form it became the guiding star of the Palestine Labour Move-
ment and of Zionist colonization in general.

Led by these principles, the Jewish migration became a
planned and socialized enterprise. It was centrally financed and
directed by an international body, the Zionist Organization.
Every two years the democratically elected delegates of the Zionist
Congress met in Europe to decide the broad outlines of coloniza-
tory policy, while in Palestine the Zionist Executive and Jewish
Agency (the two were practically identical) formed, as already
mentioned, a shadow Government under the Mandatory Power.
Within the Jewish Agency, as also in the Zionist Organization
at large, the Labour Party and trade unions occupied a dominant
position. Thus both Jewish industry and agriculture in Palestine
had from the beginning a planned socialist character. More than
half of Israel's industrial enterprises are owned and run on a
cooperative basis by the trade unions. 1 In agriculture the older
citrus plantations are privately owned, but the mixed farming
areas are mostly State property. They were acquired by the
Jewish National Fund, are the " inalienable property of the
nation", and are leased to collective or individual settlers for
long periods with option of renewal. Thus land speculation
is eliminated in the greater part of the rural areas, and the
development both of a landowner class and of rural paupers made
impossible. Nor is there a place for usury, the curse of the farmer
in oriental countries. The settlers get their land from the National
Fund, and their capital investments from the Foundation Fund
(Keren Hayesod) y from cooperative workers' banks and other public
institutions, at a low fixed rate of interest. They market their
produce through a nation-wide workers* cooperative and buy their
commodities through a similar organization. The workings of
this socialized system of economy will be discussed later. The
essential point is that from the very beginnings of modern Zionist
:olonization the experiment was run on planned collective lines.
Of particular interest was the financing of the Jewish National
1 Cf. Book Three, Chapter I.

40 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Fund (Keren Kayemet), the main instrument of land acquisition
in Palestine. One of the chief arguments of anti-Zionist propa-
ganda was that the Arabs were being edged out of Palestine by the
gold of Jewish High Finance. In fact, however, though big
donations were frequent, the Keren Kayemefs main source of
income was the pennies and cents and francs and zlotys dropped
by Jews all over the world into its blue collecting-boxes begging
bowls for the purchase of a kingdom. It looks like an ironic
punishment of the worshippers of the golden calf by their old
desert God that they had to purchase their country acre by acre
on the instalment plan.

As for Jewish high finance and the great banking houses, their
contributions were never on a decisive scale, but rather in the
nature of a few thousand pounds paid as philanthropic conscience
money. Had Jewish high finance weighed in with large-scale
transactions aimed at influencing political developments, it is
conceivable that they could have achieved sufficient pressure at
least to mitigate the immigration bar of 1939. But the fact is that
Jewish financiers were reluctant to touch political Zionism, for
fear of endangering their position in their own countries. This
was the cause of much bitterness on the part of the Zionists. And
yet the socially positive features of Israel are due to the fact that
it has come into being not through the action of financial pressure
groups, but by the pioneering efforts and financial sacrifices of
the Jewish masses.

3
To sum up.

The existence of the State of Israel is based on the colonizatory
achievements of Jews extending over a period of thirty years from
1918 to 1948.

The mystic attachment of the Jews to Palestine was trans-
formed into a legal claim by the Balfour Declaration and the
League of Nations Mandate. But unlike Shylock's claim to the
promised pound of flesh, the Zionist case is based, both materially
and morally, on the sacrifices and achievements of the Jewish
pioneers. Unlike any previous colonizers, the Jews acquired their
land not by force or by threat of force, but for hard cash from
willing sellers. Most of the land thus acquired was waste land
which the pioneers reclaimed with the work of their hands, paying
heavy toll to tropical disease and hostile raiders. Unlike any
previous colonizers, they did not exploit cheap native labour, but

THE TRIANGLE: THE JEWISH ANGLE 41

took their pride in becoming " hewers of wood and drawers of
water ". They brought material prosperity to the native popula-
tion, but no cultural values and no possible consolation for the
fact that they were gradually taking the country over. The
pressure of persecution in Europe, and their superior civilization,
made their victory inevitable and in this sense " historically just "*
while according to other standards of value the fate of the Arabs
remains a pathetic injustice.

In fifty years' time, when Israel's history is courrfed from the
day of its birth on May 15, 1948, few will take an interest in the
struggles and shocks to which it was exposed in the pre-natal
stage. Yet nations, like individuals, retain characteristic traces of
these experiences. Whatever shape the culture of the new State
of Israel may take, its pattern and values will reflect the formative
influences both of the early pioneer days, which we have discussed
in the preceding chapters, and of the tragic suspense and birth
labour of the decade starting in 1939, to which we now turn.

PART TWO

SUSPENSE

(1939-1945)

CHAPTER V

THE PALESTINE MUNICH

The collapse of a dream and the beginning of a nightmare
Antecedents of the White Paper The Mufti's rebellion
and its reward Decline and fall of the Middle East
experts.

The philosophy of appeasement Implications of a
Round Table Conference Mitigating circumstances of
British policy On disbelieving atrocities Relativity of
ethical judgment

I

1939 was a landmark for the world in general and for Israel in
particular.

For humanity at large it was the year in which the Second
World War began. For Israel it was the year in which the death
sentence of over six million Jews was pronounced, and their escape
to Palestine barred by the Chamberlain Government's White
Paper.

This crucial document, on which the fate of the National
Home hinged, and the whole Palestine controversy was centred
for a decade, was issued in May 1939. Its main points were,
firstly, that after a last batch of 75,000 Jews, to be admitted to
Palestine between 1939 and 1944, further immigration was to be
subject to Arab approval in other words, barred virtually for
ever. Secondly, it empowered the High Commissioner to prohibit
the sale of land by Arabs to Jews in specified areas which areas
were defined in the Land Transfer Regulations of 1940 so as to
cover practically 95 per cent of the country. It finally provided
for the establishment within ten years of an independent Arab
State in which the Jews were not to exceed one-third of the popu-
lation in other words, condemned them to a perpetual minority
status.

Thus, at the very moment when the extermination of the
European Jews began, the doors of Palestine w;ere slammed in
their faces, while those already inside Palestine, who had come
Dn the strength of the British undertaking that they would find

45

46 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

there a National Home, found themselves trapped and condemned
to live in " one more precarious oriental ghetto ".* It was the
collapse of a dream and the beginning of a nightmare which was to
last to the end of the British Mandate. For the Jews in Palestine the
fate of their European kin was not a matter of abstract solidarity ;
they had come from Central and Eastern Europe, and every single
one of them had left relatives behind parents, brothers and
sisters whom he knew trapped in German-occupied territory and
doomed to some atrocious form of death. This nightmare lasted
during the whole six years of war, when Palestine was cut off
from communication with Europe, and the half-million Palestine
Jews lived in uncertainty about the fate of their families, until at
last, in 1945, the Red Cross began to publish lists of the survivors
in the extermination camps. Such sustained psychological
pressure must inevitably find violent outlets ; rage and despair
gradually transformed the law-abiding pioneer country into a
second Ireland.

Before we turn to the events which the White Paper brought
in its wake, a few words must be said about the causes which
had led to its inception. As we saw, British Cabinet policy during
the twenty years which followed the Balfour Declaration was
one of hesitancy and irresolution, while the local administration
in Palestine gradually developed a marked anti-semitic bias. In
1937 the Royal Commission, in the most thorough assessment of
the Palestine problem so far made, had reached the conclusion
that the Mandate was unworkable, and had recommended the
partition of the country as the only possible solution which " if it
offers neither party all it wants, offers each what it wants most,
namely freedom and security . . . and the inestimable boon of
peace ". 2

Partition meant " that the Arabs must acquiesce in the
exclusion from their sovereignty of a piece of territory long
occupied and once ruled by them ", 3 It meant, on the other hand,
that the Jews had to content themselves with a fraction of the
National Home which they had been promised in fact about
one-twentieth of the territory originally covered by the Balfour
Declaration. It was not an ideal solution, but in view of the
incompatibility of the conflicting claims, it was the only possible

1 Mr. Churchill in the White Paper debate, May 1939.

2 Royal Commission Report, p. 296.
* Ibid. p. 296.

THE PALESTINE MUNICH 47

solution. 1 It was to be finally endorsed, after ten years of needless
torment and bloodshed, by the United Nations, and implemented
by a short but decisive test of strength*

Shortly after publication of the Royal Commission's Report,
however, fresh Arab riots broke out in Palestine. They were met
by the Administration with the same leniency which the Report
had castigated in unmistakeable terms, 2 and were allowed to
develop into a miniature rebellion which lasted until the beginning
of 1939. The Arab guerilla bands operated from the hills, holding
their own villagers for ransom, swooping down on isolated Jewish
settlements, and systematically assassinating the members of the
moderate Nashashibi clan. They were financed by the Grand
Mufti (who had meanwhile made his escape to Syria) and his clan,
the Husseinis, traditional enemies of the Nashashibis.

According to British estimates, the number of the guerilla
fighters never exceeded 1500.3 They were mostly mercenaries
recruited from Syria, and led by a Levantine adventurer named
Fawzi KaukajL Ten years later, in April 1948, the same Fawzi
Kaukaji was to lead the so-called Arab Liberation Army, which
was defeated by the still illegal Haganah forces after a fight of
three days. He subsequently fled to Syria and returned in June
as commander of an invading army operating in Galilee. This
time he was defeated in two days, and pursued by the Israeli forces
into the Lebanon. The parallel is relevant. In 1938-39 a small
band of Arab guerillas was able to hold out for two years against
His Majesty's Forces in Palestine. In 1948 an Arab army led by
the same commander was driven from the country in a few days
by the unseasoned Israeli troops. In 1938 Kaukaji was a rebel
without official outside support, while the British troops had the
equipment of a regular armed force. In 1948 he had the support of
five sovereign Arab States, while the Israeli Army fought done on
five fronts. The conclusion can hardly be avoided that the British
effort to end the Arab disturbances of 1936-39 was not a whole-
hearted one. Rather it once more

" helped to foster a. belief in the Arab mind that the National
Home was not an immutable point of policy and that if Arab
resistance to it were sufficiently obstinate and forcible, the

1 It may be mentioned in passing that this writer has advocated partition in
word and print for the last twenty years. 2 Cf. p. 17.

3 Cf. La., H. J. Simson, British Rule and Rebellion, London, 1937.

48 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Mandatory power might presently be worried or even frightened
into giving it up ".*

The Royal Commission's observation proved prophetic. The
White Paper of May 1939 could only be interpreted as a capitula-
tion of the Mandatory Power before the Grand Mufti's guerillas.

" It seemed that Jewish self-restraint during the trying years
of the disturbances had been penalized, and Arab aggression
rewarded. The inference that violence was the surest method
to achieve political success was inescapable. The sinister lesson
sank deep into the consciousness of Arabs and Jews alike." 2

The " Palestine Munich ", as the White Paper was called by
its Labour critics, came nine months after the European Munich.
But while the Chamberlain Government, in leaving Czecho-
slovakia to its fate, had the excuse of retreating before the most
efficient war machine that Europe had ever seen, it had no similar
excuse in terms of expediency for going back on Britain's pledge
to the Jews. The Arabs in 1938 were much weaker than in 1948
Syria and the Lebanon were still under French, Transjordan
under British, Mandate ; and Major Glubb, Commander of the
Arab Legion, was not yet detailed to be a crusader in Islam's Holy
War. If the combined forces of the Arab States could be beaten
by Israel in 1948, nobody can seriously pretend that a fraction of
them could have represented a threat to British interests in 1939.
And yet, strange as it seems in the light of subsequent events,
strategic expediency was the argument, and the only argument,
for the " cynical breach of faith ", to quote Mr. Churchill, the
" base betrayal ", to quote Mr. Morrison, of the Chamberlain
Government in May 1939.

The clue to this fantastic miscalculation of the relative strength
of Jews and Arabs in 1939 and again in 1948, when Foreign
Office experts confidently predicted the collapse of Israel within
a matter of days is a psychological one. The myth of the irre-
sistible Arab Holy War is a deeply ingrained belief of Christianity.
Its unconscious, archetypal roots are probably fed by school-book
memories of the Moorish and Turkish conquests, and by romanti-
cized versions of the Revolt in the Desert. " We dearly love the

1 Royal Commission Report, p. 80.

2 Political Memorandum submitted to the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Jerusalem, 1946.

-* THE PALESTINE MUNICH 49

bogey of a fanatical army of millions of desert Arabs yelling
* Allah ! ' and putting infidels to the sword, and I imagine the
idea must have started about the eleventh century during the First
Crusade." l

The working of the archetype on the allegedly sober strategic
mind may be illustrated by a grotesque and fairly unknown
episode from the First World War. Early in 1917 a few thousand
Senussi tribesmen raided the Libyan desert from Tripoli. They
were beaten and dispersed without difficulty by some second-line
British Territorials scraped together from the Canal zone. With
that the incident was over, and no further fighting occurred in
the Libyan desert until the next World War twenty-five years
later ; but the myth of an impending Holy War

" tied up on the Western Frontier for over a year some 30,000
troops badly required elsewhere, and caused us to expend on
desert railways, desert cars, transport, etc., sufficient to add
ad. to the income-tax for the lifetime of the present generation.
It is very difficult to decide now who actually was to blame for
this state of affairs probably the Intelligence Department in
the first place, as they imbued the soldiers with the idea that if
the Senussi penetrated to the Nile Valley the whole of Egypt
would rise in a holy war against us, which, to say the least, was
a gross and absurd exaggeration. . . . For months our troops
remained facing a perfectly empty desert . . . and they con-
tinued to do so until at last the authorities decided very regret-
fully that the Senussi was a myth. . . ." 2

Two years later, in 1919, the bogy cropped up once more.

" Telegrams were showering in on me to the effect that
hordes of Arabs, estimated at 40,000, were marching on Cairo
and Alexandria from the Libyan Desert . . . but after a two
days' patrol that covered the greater p^rt of the north-west
portion of the Western Desert, I failed utterly to find anything
in the nature of an organization, and wired back to that effect.
I was not believed, for the Powers that Be in Cairo had faithfully
predicted that a rising of Arabs would be the natural sequence
of events ; and as a nation we have definitely a marked Arab
complex." 3

1 C. S. Jarvis, Three Deserts, London, 1936. Major Jarvis held various
commands in the Libyan desert during the First World War, and was Governor
of the Sinai Peninsula from 1923 to 1936.

2 Jarvis, op. cit. 3 Ibid.

E

50 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Ten years later the Arab complex still continued to play havoc
with British strategy, regardless of the change of government.

" The danger of an Arab Holy War is now being used more
intensively than ever by officials in the Colonial Service and in
the various Middle Eastern Embassies as an argument against
the acceptance of the Anglo-American Report. But history
does not substantiate this line of argument. . . . Europeans
tend to overlook the fact that the difference between the
Lebanon and Saudi Arabia is much more pronounced than the
difference, say, between France and Bulgaria. . . . The last
quarter century abounds in examples of local Arab disturbances.
None of them ever produced any unified action in the Arab
states. Even Lawrence's desert campaign, stripped of its
legendary aspects, was from a military point of view a modest
affair. Tlie Druse revolt, the Palestine revolt, or Rashid Ali's
revolt in 1941, found no mass-echo in the surrounding countries
and retained the character of large-scale but localized riots
a major nuisance to the British commander on the spot but of
no strategical significance/' J

This traditional over-estimation of Arab unity and military
weight was reinforced by an emotive tendency to wishful thinking
among British oriental experts. Generations of Pashas and Beys
from Surrey and Kent had devoted their lives to the Arab cause,
and had become emotionally identified with it. The Zionist
adventure meant to them a wanton imperilment of their great
vision of an Arab renaissance under British patronage, the object
of their patient labours and sincere devotion. It was impossible
for them to realize that potentially the Arabs were already beaten
by the Jewish intruders on the oriental scene. Their ideology was
a blend of imperial strategy and Arab romanticism. Untouched
by Marxist temptations and ignorant of the elementary facts of
sociology, it never occurred to them that their dream of the rebirth
of the Arab Caliphate was an anachronism, that a national renais-
sance was impossible as long as the Arab countries retained their
mediaeval, feudal structure of corrupt landowners and poverty-
stricken, illiterate masses. Not until ten years later did the dream
dissolve under the impact of the Arab League's defeat by the
improvised armies of the Jewish State.

It was in fact the Arab experts of the Foreign Office who

1 A Palestine Munich, by R. H. S. Grossman, M.P., and Michael Foot,
M.P., London, 1946.

THE PALESTINE MUNICH 51

lived in cloud-cuckoo-land, and not the pioneers of streamlined
Jewish messianism. Sociologically, the latter were the harbingers
of the twentieth century in the Middle East ; under their impact
British Orient strategy collapsed like a house of cards.

It could not, of course, be expected that the men on the spot
should admit, even to themselves, that what they had been building
with such patient effort was a house of cards. They were the
men who could quietly say during a discussion : " My dear sir,
I have known this country for thirty years . . ." ; who spoke
several Arab dialects, who " knew the oriental mind " and had
spent more nights in Bedouin tents than the intimidated partner
in argument had drunk glasses of whiskey in his life. In fact, they
didn't even say all this, they conveyed it by gazing in silent
modesty at the glass in their hand. Gradually, in the course of
decades, the wishful thinking and emotional bias of the men on
the spot, the Abdul Rahman Hendersons and Glubb Pashas and
Clayton Effendis, became the axiom and doctrine of British Middle
East policy.

Mr, Chamberlain's Government had, for reasons beyond the
scope of this book, embraced a general philosophy of appeasement.
The experts said that the Arabs represented an impressive power,
the Jews a minor nuisance on the oriental scene. This was
apparently borne out by the fact that for years now the Arabs in
Palestine had been riotously truculent, the Jews timid and law-
abiding. The obvious inference was that the Arabs had to be
appeased, the Jews left to their fate with a murmured regret.
After all, Mr. Chamberlain had said in as many words that a
Great Power like Britain could not be expected to risk war for the
sake of a snaall country like Czechoslovakia. How, then, could
one expect her to risk a Holy War against forty million Arabs for
the sake of half a million Jews ? The .warning of the Royal
Commission that " to repress a Jewish rebellion against British
policy would be as unpleasant a task as the repression of Arab
rebellions has been " l went unheeded, as did similar warnings
by Mr. Churchill and the Labour Party.

2

The motives behind the Chamberlain Government's Palestine
policy became evident during the preliminaries to the launching
1 Royal Commission Report, p. 103.

52 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the White Paper. In February 1939 the Government called
a Round Table Conference of Arabs and Jews to London. The
proceedings of this Conference were marked by two significant
innovations. Firstly, when the Palestine Arabs refused to sit at one
table with the Jews, the British Government endorsed this affront
and agreed to conduct separate negotiations with the two parties.
Secondly, His Majesty's Government invited not only representa-
tives of the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine, but also
representatives of the Governments of Egypt, Iraq and Saudi
Arabia. Never before had a British Government, when negotiat-
ing with Egypt, or any other Arab State, invited the neighbouring
States to participate in the parley. By taking this diplomatically
unprecedented step the British Government intended to demon-
strate that Palestine was not merely the concern of its local
population, but of the Arab world at large. As a rule, a Colonial
Power will do everything to rebuff attempts by outside parties to
interfere in its administration ; in this case interference by
sovereign Arab States in Palestine affairs was directly invited.
The course was set for a policy which the Foreign Office was
consistently to pursue in the years to come. The initiative of
giving the Arab States a locus standi in Palestine was followed by
the initiative for the creation of an Arab League which,- torn by
internal conflict and dynastic rivalries, remained a diplomatic
fiction in all respects but one : the fight against Zionism. The
presence, on British invitation, of the neighbouring Arab States
at the Round Table Conference of 1939 was the prelude to the
presence, with active British support, of their invading armies in
Palestine in 1948.

3

The Chamberlain Government's policy was, indicted as con-
trary to international law by the League of Nations Mandates
Commission, and in words of rarely heard vehemence from all
sides of the House of Commons. The White Paper aroused a
storm of protest from the United States, and has done more harm
to British prestige than any other single political decision in many
years past. It was an inhuman policy from the point of view of
morality, and from the point of view of expediency a serious
blunder. But the picture would be one-sided were we to ignore
the arguments in its favour, which at the time carried considerable
weight.

THE PALESTINE MUNICH 53

Great Britain was faced with a war for which it was unpre-
pared ; and it was the Government's duty to clear the decks for
action with the ruthlessness which the emergency demanded.
The Axis Powers had been very active for some years in the Arab
countries, where British influence was on the wane. By sacri-
ficing the Jewish National Home the Chamberlain Government
hoped to regain some of the lost ground and to neutralize Arab
hostility during the coming conflict. That this calculation was
erroneous, as Rashid Ali's pro-Axis revolution in Iraq, the attitude
of the Egyptian Court and General Staff, of the Syrian and
Palestine Arabs later proved, does not alter the fact that, thanks
to the advice of its Arab experts, the Government was honestly
convinced that it had no alternative but to play the Arab against
the Jewish card.

If we switch from the plane of expediency to the plane of
humanitarian considerations, the main feature of the White Paper
policy was lack of imagination the inability of the British mind
to conceive that Hitler's atrocious threats against the Jews were
meant in earnest. The fear of impending massacres was shrugged
off as exaggeration and Jewish hysteria. I have written elsewhere
about the psychological defence-mechanisms responsible for the
phenomenon of this stubborn " disbelief in atrocities'* which is
particularly pronounced in Anglo-Saxon countries. 1 This pheno-
menon influenced not only British policy in Palestine, with bitter
consequences to the Jews, but was equally characteristic of
Britain's general attitude to Nazism, Fascism and, later on, to
Soviet totalitarianism ; with equally bitter consequences to
Czechs, Poles, Baits and the world at large. Rarely has the cry
" Father, forgive them, for they know not. what they do " attained
a more tragic significance than in the policy of the Anglo-Saxon
Powers between the wars. The Jewish refugee tragedy was merely
one episode in this general pattern.

For, and this is the third point to be made, Britain's undeniable
guilt in barring the Jewish escape road to Palestine can only be
seen in its proper perspective by comparing it to the policies and
actions of the other big Powers of the day. Germany was trying
to impose her New Order with a savagery unseen in Europe since
the Dark Ages. Russia had in 1939 concluded her own super-
Munich with Hitler, and was deporting Poles and Baits by their

1 On Disbelieving Atrocities, " The Yogi and the Commissar ", London,
1945-

54 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

hundreds of thousands to Central Asia and the Arctic labour camps.
The United States, mainstay of democracy, were still rubbing
their eyes and washing their hands of Europe in lease-lend soap.
It was a time, as somebody put it after the conclusion of the Nazi-
Communist alliance, when all " isms " had become " wasms ".
Europe had become a jungle and the British Government was
howling with the wolves. Compared with the gigantic scale of
perfidy of Stalin's pact with Hitler, and with the savagery of
Hitler's massacre of the Jews, the White Paper appears as a
relatively minor sin, and essentially more a sin of omission than
a calculated one.

To put the callous policy of the Mandatory Power on a par
with the barbarity of Hitlerism, as the Jewish terrorists did in
their slogan of the " Nazi-British ", is of course unjust and stupid.
It expresses that incapacity to make distinctions of degree which
characterizes the mental climate of our age, and is by no means
restricted to fanatics. The slogan of the " Nazi-British " is on
a par with those of the " Social- Fascists ", " Judeo- Bolsheviks "
and the rest. The British White Paper regime in Palestine cannot
be measured by absolute ethical standards ; it must be judged
against the background of the moral depravity of Europe at the
time. And lastly, the scales of justice would be biassed if the
Palestine Administration's responsibility for the drowning of
the 800 refugees of the Struma were not weighed against the thou-
sands of Jewish children and adults who found a haven on the
British Isles thanks to the dogged efforts of English Quakers,
trade unionists and philanthropic societies.

This warning should be constantly borne in mind during the
following sections which deal with the grim facts produced by
British policy in Palestine from the outbreak of the war to the
termination of the Mandate.

CHAPTER VI

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS

The League refuses to endorse the White Paper Jewish
denial of its legality The death-blow Let the children
come unto me The one spy in a hundred " Nothing
whatever will be done n .

Assandu, Assimi and Tiger Hill Pad fie y Patria and
Milos Atlantic and Salvador The Struma The
blindness of the heart.

The little death ships and the rise of terrorism

THE story of Palestine from May 1939 to the end of the war is
essentially the story of Jews trying to save their skins, and of the
efforts of the Mandatory Power to prevent this through an immi-
gration blockade maintained by force and diplomatic pressure.

In June 1939 the White Paper came up for discussion before
the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.
The Commission found unanimously that it was incompatible
with the construction put on the Mandate in the past by the
Mandatory Power itself, while the majority found in addition that
it was incompatible with any possible construction which might
be put on it. . Now, according to Article 26 of the Mandate, " the
consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for
any modification of the terms of this Mandate ". The Council
of the League was to meet in September 1939 ; but meanwhile
the war broke out and it never met. As the Mandatory Commis-
sion (and leading politicians of all parties in Britain itself) had
found that the White Paper amounted to a very definite modifica-
tion of the Mandate, Britain's new -policy could only gain legal
validity by the League's consent ; and this consent was never
given. The Jews, therefore, had reasonable grounds for denying
the White Paper's legality. This was the juridical basis of the
Jewish Agency's refusal to consider immigration exceeding the
White Paper quotas as " illegal ", or activities designed to facili-
tate the rescue of the doomed Jews of Europe as unlawful, even

55

56 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

if they contravened administrative ordinances based on the White
Paper.

The first of these ordinances was a death-blow to all hope of
rescuing the most directly threatened portion of Europe's Jews,
those in Germany and Poland. At the outbreak of the war the
Government decreed that people from Germany or German-
occupied Polish territory were not to be admitted into Palestine
(except the small number of those who already held pre-war im-
migration certificates, and valid immigration visas in addition).
Before the outbreak of war, that is before these regulations had
come into force, the Jewish Agency had asked for the immediate
admission of 20,000 children from Poland and of 10,000 young
men from the Balkan countries. The requests were rejected, and
the Polish-Jewish children went to Maidanek and Auschwitz
instead.

In May 1940, when the new regulations banning the admission
of Jews from German-occupied territory were already in force,
the Jewish Agency made a new application supplication would
perhaps be the correct term. for the exemption of children and
certain adults of known identity from the deadly ban. Fantastic
as it sounds, it took the Mandatory Administration nearly two
years to make up its mind on this issue. All exceptions in favour
of adults were refused. The concession regarding the children
came too late.

It is essential, not only in the present context but for the
whole development of Anglo- Jewish relations, to bear in mind
that the Jews in immediate danger of life were those in German-
occupied territory ; that precisely these people's escape to
Palestine had been declared " illegal " by the Mandatory Adminis-
tration's wanton decrees ; that consequently to help " illegal "
immigration had become the supreme ethical commandment for
every Jew inside or outside Palestine. For it can hardly be con-
tested that the pretence of administering a National Home for
people who are not permitted to enter it, even when in danger of
life, was a moral perfidy and legally absurd. One may imagine
the effect, under these circumstances, of official Palestine Govern-
ment announcements like the following, made on November 20,
1940:

" H.M. Government are not lacking in sympathy for re-
fugees from territories under German control. But they are

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 57

responsible for the administration of Palestine, and are bound
to see to it that the laws of the country are not openly flouted.
Moreover, they can only regard a revival of illegal Jewish im-
migration at the present juncture as likely to affect the local
situation most adversely, and to prove a serious menace to
British interests in the Middle East. ..."

The " menace to British interests in the Middle East " was
specified on a later occasion (see p. 63) as affecting " security
and food supply ". The second argument is too frivolous for
serious consideration (Palestine was one of the best-fed countries
during the war). As for security, that is, the danger of Jewish
refugees acting as Nazi agents a practically unknown occurrence
during the whole war the obvious answer was to keep refugees
whose loyalty was not completely ascertained in safe internment
for the duration, instead of condemning, under the pretext that
there might be one spy among a hundred refugees, the whole
hundred to extermination. This same argument about the pos-
sible " one spy in a hundred " has served the Soviet Government
as a constant pretext for refusing to admit Spanish militiamen,
International Brigaders, persecuted Communists or any other
category of refugees into Soviet territory, and for condemning the
populations of entire republics (Crimeans, Tchetchens, Volga
Germans) to deportation. It is the classic argument of ruthless
totalitarianism against the claims of humanity. Yet to the Jewish
Agency's supplications to let the condemned men in under any
conditions of screening or internment before their fate was
consummated the reply was that internment was " not a
desirable solution ". J

In fact the whole argument about security was merely an
awkward pretext. The Government's real motive was their fear
of "upsetting the Arabs" which had grown into an obsession,
into a policy of fanatic appeasement as it were, carried to an
extreme where it lost all touch with reality. British Middle East
strategy had been built on a myth ; British decency and humane-
ness were sacrificed to a bogy. The Government's attitude was
bluntly summarized in a communication from Lord Cranborne
to the Jewish Agency in May 1942 which declared : " In pur-
suance of the existing policy of taking all practicable steps to
discourage illegal immigration into Palestine, nothing whatever

1 D. Trevor, Under the White Paper t Jerusalem, 1948, p. 29. See footnote
on p. 63.

58 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

will be done to facilitate the arrival of Jewish refugees in
Palestine 'V

The date of this communication should be noted. At that
time the death trains had started rattling through Eastern Europe
and the mass extermination had begun. Three months earlier the
Jewish Agency had communicated the relevant facts in their
possession to the Palestine Government. The Government could
not claim ignorance ; only the mitigating circumstance that they
had eyes which saw not, and ears which heard not.

The practical consequences of this policy were, in the words
of an American writer, that in Palestine

" over half a million Jews waited with open arms for their tor-
mented kin ... while over the Mediterranean and Black Seas
unclean and unseaworthy little cargo boats crept from port to
port or tossed about on the open waters, waiting in vain for
permission to discharge their crowded human cargoes. Hunger,
thirst, disease and unspeakable living conditions reigned on
those floating coffins. . . . There is a list of mass tragedies
already available ; incomplete though it certainly must be, it is
sickeningly long." 2

Out of this list of mass tragedies only a few shall be mentioned
here. Even before the promulgation of the White Paper, in March
and April 1939, three refugee ships the Assandu, Assimi and
Panagia Konstario packed with Jews who had escaped from
Germany and Rumania, reached Palestine and were refused per-
mission to land. In the House of Commons Mr. Noel-Baker
asked the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, what
would happen to these people. Mr. MacDonald said they had
been sent back to where they came from.

Mr. Noel-Baker : " Does that mean to concentration camps ? "

Mr. MacDonald : " The responsibility rests with those re-
sponsible for organizing illegal immigration." 3

The theme was set and remained unchanged for a decade ; its

1 M. Samuel, Harvest in the Desert, Philadelphia, 1944.

2 Statements and Memoranda, presented by the Jewish Agency to the
Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry', Jerusalem, 1947, p. 296.

3 Debate in the House of Commons, April 26-2?, 1939.

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 59

variations in officialese were repeated over and over again, to the
accompaniment of the rumbling of the death trains and the hissing
of chlorine let into the gas chambers.

As human imagination is indifferent to the fate of anonymous
masses and only responds to detail, it may not be out of place to
quote here a passage from an open letter by this author, written
under the emotive impact of the events described : l

" Try to put yourself in the place of a Jew of your own age
on the jetty of Haifa, shouting and waving to a relative your
son for instance on the deck of one of those ships. He is
not permitted to land ; the ship lifts anchor to take its doomed
hysterical load back to where it came from. The figure of your
boy grows smaller ; a few years later you hear that he has been

fassed in Oswiecim. If, instead of Smith, your name were
chmulewitz, it might have happened to you. Something on
the same lines happened, among others, to a man whom I met
in Palestine two years ago ; he told me that his mother and
three brothers had been killed by German sadism and the
British White Paper '. His name is David Friedman- Yellin,
and he is the head of the so-called Stern Gang."

The hunting down of " illegal immigrants " became gradually
an obsession with the Palestine authorities. At the time when
refugee ships were being turned back to their port of origin, a
special Ordinance authorized the Palestine Coast Guards to shoot
" at or into " any ship suspected of bringing illegal immigrants
and refusing to turn by. 2 The prophecy of Philip Noel-Baker,
that under the new policy the only way to stop refugees would
be "to tell those kindly British soldiers to shoot them down ", 3
came true; on September i, 1939, the first two refugees were
killed on board the immigrant ship Tiger Hill by fire from a police
coastal cutter. From that date to the end of the Mandate such
incidents became a regular occurrence.

1 " Open Letter to a Parent of a British Soldier in Palestine ", New States-
man and Nation, August 16, 1947.

2 Palestine Gazette Extraordinary, April 27, 1939.

3 " If the Secretary of State's policy is now adopted, the illegal immigration
of these tortured people from Germany and elsewhere will enormously increase.
The Jews of Palestine will go by the tens of thousands down to the beach to
welcome and to cover and protect their landing. The only way to stop them
is to tell those kindly British soldiers to shoot them down. . . . For that, if
for no other reason, this policy is bound to fail." Debate in the House of
Commons, April 26-27, 1939.

60 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

When the war began it became technically impossible to turn
refugee ships back to their country of origin. And yet they kept
arriving ; no White Papers and Ordinances could abolish the will
to survive. In November 1940 two derelict tramp steamers, the
Pacific and the Milos, managed to get as far as Haifa with 1800
survivors on board. The majority among them were Zionists
trained in agricultural work who at the eve of the war had been
waiting for their turn on the immigration quota ; several hundreds
among them had relatives in Palestine. As they could not be sent
back to Germany, the Government decided to deport them to the
tropical island of Mauritius for the duration of the war. In
order to kill the last spark of hope in the deportees' minds, the
Government took pains to' point out that even after the war entry
into Palestine would be refused them :

" Their ultimate disposal will be a matter for consideration
after the war, but it is not proposed that they shall remain in
the colony to which they are sent or that they should go to
Palestine. Similar action will be taken in the case of any further
parties who may succeed in reaching Palestine with a view to
illegal entry." J

But the deportees never sailed to the Indian Ocean. They
were transferred from their two unseaworthy ships to the British
steamer Patria, and were to sail from Haifa on November 25,
1940. At 9 A.M. on that day the passengers blew up their
ship. Over two hundred of them were torn to bits, or drowned a
hundred yards from the shore of their promised land. They had
reached their journey's end. They were not even threatened with
deportation back to Europe ; only to a tropical island without
hope of return. But these people had become allergic to barbed
wire. When a person reaches that stage he is past listening to the
reasonable voice of officialdom which explains to him that he
should never have escaped, or saved his wife and children, as " a
revival of illegal Jewish immigration at the present juncture " was
" likely to affect the local situation most adversely ", 2

The whole Jewish population of Haifa had been watching the
preparations for the Patria's departure and saw her blow up.
Among them was a boy of fourteen named Eliyahu Ben Hakim, who
lived in Panorama Street on Mount Carmel and saw through his

1 Palestine Government Statement, November 20, 1940. My italics.

* Ibid.

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 6l

field-glasses the corpses floating in the water, and women without
arms- or heads being dragged into boats by fish-hooks. Four years
later the boy shot Britain's Resident Minister, Lord Moyne, in a
street in Cairo and was duly hanged.

Altogether 260 persons were drowned in this incident. The
day before the tragedy another hell ship had arrived : the 8oo-ton
paddle-steamer Atlantic, carrying the survivors of the Jewish
community of Danzig, together with other refugees from Austria
and Czechoslovakia, and their wives and children, 1880 persons
in all. Typhus had broken out on the ship, and during the last
twelve hours of the journey to Haifa fifteen passengers had died
on board. They were still fishing for the. corpses of the Patria
victims in Haifa harbour, but this did not deter the Palestine
Government from having the new arrivals deported. They were
taken off board to the concentration camp of Athlit, and a fortnight
later, on Sunday, December 8, were dragged out by force from
their huts in the camp and shipped off the majority naked, as
they offered passive resistance and had to be carried one by one
on stretchers amidst scenes of mass hysteria to the island of
Mauritius.

They stayed on that malaria-ridden tropical island for five full
years, until August 1945. During the first two and a half years
the male deportees were kept in cells in an old French prison, while
the women lived in corrugated-iron huts, twenty-four to a hut.
They were allowed to see each other three times a week for two
hours. Fifty children were born on the island. One hundred
and twenty-six persons, or round 10 per cent of the deportees,
died of tropical diseases.

And still more ships were on their way towards the land which
was still called the Jewish National Home. In December 1940 a
75-foot sailing-boat, the Salvador, carrying 350 refugees from
Bulgaria, reached the Turkish coast. By that time the Palestine
Government had communicated to the Turkish authorities their
refusal to grant entry permits to Jews from occupied Europe.
Accordingly the Turkish authorities refused to admit into their
territory refugees not already possessed of a Palestine visa. The
Salvador was permitted to take food and water, and then turned
back to the high seas. She was dismasted in a storm, and 231 of
her passengers men, women and children were drowned.
The survivors were brought back to Istanbul and were still
refused .Palestine visas. One part of them was forcibly sent back

6z PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

to Bulgaria under German occupation. The remaining 70 em-
barked on yet another refugee ship, the s.s. Darien, and managed
to reach Haifa four months later, in March 1941. As the vessel
was on the point of sinking, the refugees had to be landed. Thus
were 70 out of 350 allowed to survive.

The eifect of the Government's declared policy that " nothing
whatever will be done to facilitate the arrival of Jewish refugees "
is expressed by the following immigration figures :

1938 . . 13,000

*939 - 27,500

1940 . . 8,000

1941 . . 6,000

1942 . . 3,700

1943 . . 8,500

1944 . . 14,500

As the German armies progressed through Europe, one country
after another became " enemy occupied territory " from which,
according to the Immigration Ordinance of 1939, no Jew was
permitted to enter Palestine. As for countries not yet occupied
by the enemy, the White Paper had authorized the immigration
of the last batch of 75,000 at a rate of 15,000 a year. But as a
measure of retaliation against the continued trickle of " illegals ",
like the shipwrecked passengers of the Salvador, who had dared
to survive without official consent, even the immigration quotas
for refugees from non-occupied territories were withheld for the
decisive half-year periods October 1939 to March 1940, and
October 1940 to March 1941. The latter period immediately
preceded the German occupation of the Balkans. Except for a
few hundred emergency permits, which mostly came too late, no
Balkan Jew was given the chance to save his or her skin by the
only escape route still open.

The crowning episode in this series of " stupid, callous and
inhuman acts " Lord Davies in the House of Lords on March
n, 1942 was reached with the sinking of the Struma. This
i8o-ton Danube cattle-boat lurched into the harbour of Istanbul
on December 16, 1941, practically a wreck, with 769 passengers
crowded in cages on a deck measuring 60 feet by 20 feet. A
number of them were on the verge of insanity. The boat stood
in the port of Istanbul for more than two months. During this
time the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem made frantic efforts to obtain
Palestine visas for the passengers ; or at least for a selection among
them ; or at least for the children under 16 so that the Turks
might permit them to land. The first request the Government

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 63

refused on grounds of security and food supply. The second
alternative the Government refused, because to make a selection
would be too cruel a task. The third alternative, to let at least the
children go, was supported by the fact that some time ago His
Majesty's Government had agreed to permit the entry of a limited
number of children from Rumania and Hungary into Palestine.
To this argument the Government replied that this ruling would
not automatically apply to the children on the Struma, and that
a special decision would have to be taken with regard to them.
Meanwhile two months had passed ; on February 24 the Turkish
authorities, at the end of their patience, turned the vessel back
to the Black Sea. Within a mile of the Turkish coast the tragedy
of the Patria was repeated ; the ship sank with all its passengers,
including 250 women and 70 children ; there was one survivor.

It should be added that while for all adults on board the
Government's refusal to grant them visas was final, the children
between the ages of n and 16 were reprieved at least in theory.
After two months' delay the Jewish Agency was informed by the
Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government that the children
of the age categories mentioned would be allowed into Palestine.
But the ship put out to sea nine days later with all the children
on board, who were duly drowned with the rest. After the event
the Jewish Agency asked to be informed whether the Palestine
Government had communicated to the Turkish authorities its
decision to grant the children visas. The Palestine Government
gave no answer to this question. The British Government spokes-
man in the parliamentary debate which followed kept equally
silent on this point. Indirect evidence suggests that the Palestine
Government never informed the Turks of its willingness to take
care of the children, and never asked that they be permitted to
land. 1

Procrastination of the same kind continued, with the same tragic
results. In the middle of 1943 the British Government finally
agreed to grant visas to all Jewish refugees who managed to escape
to Turkish territory. The Jewish Agency was confidentially
informed of this decision, but it was never made public, presum-

1 The full evidence regarding the Struma and the documents relating to it
have been published in Daphne Trevor's Under the White Paper, Jerusalem,
1948. Miss Trevor, who is employed in the Press Department of the Israeli
Foreign Ministry, had access to the State archives ; her book contains the most
complete collection of documentary material relating to the period 1939-45.

64 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

ably because the Government was apprehensive that if its gener-
osity were to become known, too many Jews would be tempted to
escape. For a full nine months the decision was not communicated
to the Turkish authorities, despite repeated queries from the latter.
When the communication was finally made, in 1944, it was once
more too late ; the fate of the Jews from the Balkans had been
sealed.

During their two thousand years of exile, never have more Jews
been murdered than in the two years from 1942 to 1944 ; never
have they been more in need of a national haven. They were
denied it by men otherwise kind and well-meaning, who had
become victims of a strange obsession, a mirage of the desert.
Not only were Jews denied direct access to the Promised Land,
but even neutral countries were discouraged from granting them
a temporary refuge for fear that after the war they would again
gravitate towards Palestine., In April 1943 the Swedish Govern-
ment was prepared to admit 20,000 Jewish children from Ger-
many, provided that the British and U.S.A. Governments
guaranteed to take charge of them after cessation of the hostilities.
This guarantee was delayed until the end of 1943, by which time
the relations between Sweden and Germany had so deteriorated
that it was again too late. As a reason for the delay the Colonial
Secretary stated in the House of Lords that the British Govern-
ment did not see its way to offering' the children " a country of
ultimate refuge " ; as for Palestine, it was " not possible for
H.M.G. to go beyond the terms of policy approved by Parlia-
ment " meaning the terms of the White Paper. 1

Similar opportunities arose, and were rejected, in connection
with the rescue of Rumanian and Hungarian Jews. In the course
of a conversation in 1944, a high official of the Foreign Office,
exasperated by Zionist insistence in thinking up scheme after
scheme to rescue Jewish families from the crematoria, exclaimed
to the future Foreign Secretary of Israel : " Where should we be
if the Germans should offer to dump a million Jews on us ? " 2

There was no evil intent behind these words and acts. The
sins committed were mainly sins of omission, prompted by the
timeless curse of mankind, blindness of the heart. Their effect
was summed up in this laconic sentence of the Jewish Agency's
memorandum to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry :
" There can be little doubt that substantial numbers who are dead
1 Trevor, op. rit. p. 86. 2 Jbid. p. 122.

THE LITTLE DEATH SHIPS 65

to-day, certainly tens of thousands, might have been alive if the
gates of Palestine had been kept open ".

When victory came at last, European Jewry had been virtually
exterminated : six millions were dead, one survived. Yet the
survivors were still denied entry into Palestine ; and the policy
of forcible deportations to Cyprus or back to Germany was
resorted to once more. Three years after the end of the war, six
months after the end of the British Mandate and the proclamation
of the Jewish State, there were still 12,000 survivors of the weary
odyssey kept behind barbed wire on the island of Cyprus, anno
Domini 1948.

3

A few days after the Struma went down in the Black Sea,
posters of a new kind appeared all over Palestine in Hebrew and
English. They showed a photograph of the High Commissioner,
and bore the caption :

MURDER

SIR HAROLD MACMICHAEL, known as High

Commissioner of Palestine, wanted for the

murder by drowning of 800 refugees on

board the Struma

Jewish terrorism had started in earnest. It had grown out of
the terror of the sea, the gaping mouths of the drowning, the deaf-
mute gesture of their splashing hands. The drifting corpses gave
blood-poisoning to the nation. The measured utterances of
officialdom were answered by the rattle of the automatics of fanatic
gunmen. Lawlessness had become the supreme law of the Holy
Land.

CHAPTER VII

THE RISE OF HAGANAH

The Shomrim : Hebrew Buffalo Bills The twilight of
illegality Haganah during the Arab revolt New watch-
towers go up Wingate, Lawrence of the Hebrews.

The negro changes colour Arms searches and arms
trials His Majesty's loyal Jewish terrorists The death
of Raziel The illegal war effort.

The triangle in the war Jewish first and second
thoughts British second and third thoughts The
Arabs : no more " bonjour ".

Rommel anteportas The second Anglo- Jewish honey-
moon Skull and double-crossbones The show-trials
The cancer in the war effort

I

THE official title of Israel's Army is Z'va Haganah, Army of
Defence. The title was chosen for reasons of tradition and
considerations of party politics. For Haganah, " Defence ", was
for thirty years the name of the illegal Jewish militia in Palestine ;
it was and remains essentially an organ of the Socialist Labour
Party. Like everything else in Israel, the evolution of this body
from a kind of romantic band of Wild West rangers into the
regular army of the new State was determined by all sorts of
complex ideological trends. It is as much a product of the hard
pressure of necessity as of spiritual factors.

In the 18705, when the first Jewish agricultural colonies were
founded under Turkish rule, there was no public security in
Palestine ; the law of the country was the law of the desert. The
killing of unbelievers, raids and pillage were hallowed customs
among Bedouins and villagers alike. The Turkish administration
hardly bothered to keep up even the pretence of any lawful order.
If the Jewish colonists were to survive, they could do so only by
proving to their Arab neighbours that they were not " sons of
death " that is, cowards but men able and willing to fight.
Physical valour was the only means to gain the Bedouin's esteem
and thus to achieve peaceful relations on a local scale. Moreover,

66

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 67

in order to avoid getting involved in interminable blood-feuds
with a neighbouring tribe or village, the early settlers preferred
cudgel and knife to shotguns.

In his History of Jewish Self-Defence in Palestine, Eliahu
Golomb (1879-1946), one of the first Jewish " Watchmen " and
later Commander of the Haganah, gave a series of sketches of
those legendary times.

" In those days there were no buses. Even a mule was an
exceptional luxury. The settlement was often completely
isolated and special steps had to be taken to. ensure the food
supply. The settlers had to ford Pitches and flooded wadis
after the heavy rains, and pass alone through Arab villages
bringing food from the nearest town. . . .

" The Arabs of the neighbourhood of a new Jewish village,
having sold to the settlers the land on which the village was
erected, afterwards tried by constant raids to make life impos-
sible for them ; and by chasing them away, to regain possession
of their land in addition to the houses erected on it. In
Petakh Tikwa, there was an additional source of trouble. Two
tribes wished to sell part of their land to the Jews, and when the
settlers purchased from one tribe only, the other began to attack
the settlement. Since they knew that the Jews observed
Saturday as the day of rest, they staged all their attacks on the
Shabbath. Stamper (one of the early * Watchmen '), a scrupu-
lously observant Jew, had often to summon the settlers to their
posts straight from the Synagogue, to defend the settlement with
cudgels and knives."

These "Watchmen", in Hebrew Shomrim, were a kind of
Hebrew cowboy or Wild West ranger. Their name was taken
from the Bible : " Watchman, what of the night ? " They rode on
horseback, wore Arab headgear and spoke fluent Arabic. They
had familiarized themselves with Bedouin law and Arab custom,
and were highly respected among the Arabs. Many of them had
become blood-brothers of influential tribal elders, and were called
in to arbitrate in disputes or settle blood-feuds. A number of the
Israeli leaders are veteran Shomrim, among them the Prime
Minister, Ben Gurion, once a farm labourer in the lower-Galilean
village of Sedjera. 1

Among Eliahu Golomb's reminiscences are stories like the

1 Incidentally, the villagers of Sedjera are Gerim, that is pure-blooded
Russians from the Caucasus who embraced the Jewish faith some genera-
tions ago.

68 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

following one which, with due allowance for the growth of legend,
is characteristic of the atmosphere of those days.

" Judah Rab [one of the old Shomrim, and a friend of
Golomb's] one day saw a Bedoui on horseback riding past
Petakh Tikwa, and, as the watchman on duty, he hailed him
and offered him hospitality, according to local custom. The
Bedoui however rode on, taking no notice. The next morning
he turned up again, and this time he rode straight up to Rab
and accepted his invitation. It then transpired that this Bedoui
was a Jew from Arabia who had lost his mare and gone in search
of her. His search had taken him as far as Damascus, where he
had found the mare. Having come to Damascus, he thought he
might as well visit the Holy Land. He had by chance ridden
into Faja, an Arab village in the neighbourhood, where the
villagers told him about the new Jewish settlement. So he
had turned his mare towards Petakh Tikwa, but when he had
reached it on the previous night he had been disappointed to
see no Jews about, only 'F'ranji ', Europeans. He had thought
that the Arabs had made a fool of him and had promptly re-
turned to Faja village to take his revenge. At length the villagers
had convinced him that there existed Jews of the European kind
as well as oriental ones like himself. So he had come back to
see what they were like.

" Judah Rab confirmed to him that the settlers were indeed
Jews who had lived in exile in Europe, and had now returned.
The Bedoui thereupon said ' I will remain with you for a year '.
And so he did. His name was Joseph ben David, or, in its
Arabic version, Yussuf ibn Daoud. He joined the ' Watchmen '
of Petakh Tikwa and taught the settlers some new tricks. Like
all Bedouin, he had a rifle, but never used it in a fight. ' The
rifle,' he would say, * is a weapon for women. Anybody can
shoot with a rifle. The sword and the spear are the arms for
a man.'

" On one occasion there was a raid by the strong Abu
Jarmana tribe which had come to Petakh Tikwa to graze their
flocks and to steal corn. Yussuf ibn Daoud was among those
who rode out to ward off the attack. He speared the sheikh
of the tribe and roder into their camp shaking his spear and
carrying the corpse of the sheikh across his saddle. . . . This
Bedoui Jew, like his Sephardi comrade Ben Maimon, a native
of Jaffa, and Stamper and Katz and the rest of the men of
Petakh Tikwa, made a great name for the Jews and made the
Arabs accept the fact that it would not be possible to drive them
off the land ..."

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 69

These Jewish Buffalo Bills were the forerunners of Haganah.
In 1905 a new wave of immigrants came into the country after
the pogroms of Kishinev and Cholon. Many of these young men
had been members of the Jewish self-defence organizations in the
pogrom-threatened small towns of Russia. They brought to the
rugged Watchmen of the old settlements their European experi-
ence and founded the first country- wide para-military organization,
Hashomer. 1

The immigrants of 1905 were not only conscious political
Zionists, but -having been brought up with the generation of
Russian students which led the abortive revolution after the Russo-
Japanese War, they were at the same time revolutionary Socialists.
With their arrival the Jewish self-defence movement assumed a
political character.

2

The next transformation came after the First World War when
mass immigration started in earnest. The days of the romantic
and somewhat individualistic Watchmen were over. Within the
framework of the planned enterprise of colonization self-defence
had to be put on a democratic mass scale, and become the para-
military equivalent of a popular conscript army. The urgent
need for it became evident during the first serious Arab riots of
1920 and 1921, in the course of which scores of Jews were killed
and several hundreds wounded.

This was at the very beginning of the British Mandate.
Obviously the Mandatory Government had two courses open to
it : either to put permanent garrisons into every Jewish settlement
and outpost, or to legalize some form of Jewish defence organiza-
tion. The first alternative would have put a heavy burden on the
British Forces and the British taxpayer. The second course would
probably have led to Arab claims for some form of armed organiza-
tion of their own. So the Administration, by way of compromise,
while refusing to give the Haganah its official sanction, tolerated
its existence. This state of affairs continued for thirty years, until
the end of the Mandate. The Jewish Defence organization became
another white negro, which changed its colour according to the
political situation.

Thus, in theory, the Jews were not allowed to possess any
irms, except for a few old-fashioned shotguns which were issued

1 Ha-shomer (plural shomrim), the watchman.

70 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

after the 1921 disturbances to isolated settlements. These were
to be kept in sealed cases and only opened in a serious emergency
for which they would have been useless anyway. The author-
ities knew quite well that an isolated settlement of, say, a hundred
Jewish men, women and children, surrounded by thousands of
Arabs from the neighbouring villages and hills, could not be
defended except by automatic weapons. For the Jews to respect
the letter of the law would have been straight suicide, as subse-
quent events abundantly proved. Their only means of achieving
security was to smuggle in arms and to hide them in the settle-
ments. The authorities were well aware of this, and not only
tolerated this practice, but at times even issued " illegal " arms
to Haganah. At other times, when the political constellation
changed, they swooped down on the settlements, confiscated the
arms and inflicted, as will be seen, quite fantastic sentences on
their possessors.

It was an unhealthy state of affairs for both parties concerned.
Haganah, forced into illegality, led a kind of semi-underground
existence ; its thousands of members lived in a conspiratorial
twilight. The effects of this habit lingered on even when Haganah
became transformed into Israel's regular army. Both leaders and
rank and file had been conditioned during the course of a whole
generation to bypass the law ; and as this was at periods directly
encouraged by the British rulers, while at other times it was
punished with the utmost severity, respect for the law was
gradually destroyed.

The first .serious test for Haganah came during the disturbances
of 1929. For six days, from August 23 to August 29, Arab mobs
all over the country, incited by the Grand Mufti and the village
priests under his sway, ran riot against the Jews. The old Jewish
communities of Hebron and Safed, which relied on British pro-
tection and had no Haganah units of their own, were practically
wiped out. The state of public security provided by the Man-
datory Government can be gathered from the Royal Commission's
Report which mentions that Hebron, a town with a population of
several thousands, had one British Police officer. Over 60 Jews,
including women and children, were killed there, and more than
50 wounded ; and " only the courage of the one British Police
officer in the town prevented the outbreak from developing into
a general massacre ". l On the other hand, the Haganah-protected

1 Royal Commission Report, p. 50.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 71

rural settlements repulsed all Arab attacks, regardless of how
isolated and heavily outnumbered they were and notwithstand-
ing the fact that a short time before the outbreak the British
authorities, acting on one of those sudden and mysterious brain-
waves to which the official mind is subject, had withdrawn even
the sealed shotgun cases from the settlements, thus leaving them,
in theory, completely defenceless. Only three or four settlements
(among them Hulda, whose name should be retained), which were
insufficiently equipped with illegal arms, suffered heavily in
damage and casualties.

The experience of 1929 had taught Haganah, in the words of
a Zionist pamphlet, that " where the Jews had illegal arms, they
successfully resisted attack. Where they had none, they were
slaughtered." :

3

Then came the disturbances of 1936-39, culminating in the
\rab revolt. By that time Jewish communal settlements were
lotted over the whole country : in the Judaean hills and the
[ordan Valley, on the borders of the southern desert and up
n Galilee the stronghold of Fawzi's guerilla bands. These
solated outposts, some of them defended by only a score of men,
ull of tempting women and fat cattle, were the obvious target for
he Arab guerillas. Yet not a single Jewish settlement was
rvacuated or taken. An even more remarkable fact is that at the
>eak of the Arab revolt new Jewish settlements were founded
n the very heart of Arab-controlled territory in the hills of
Jebuloun, right on the Syrian border, and even on the eastern,
Syrian shore of the Sea of Galilee. They were a demonstration
>f the stubborn resolve of the Jews to continue their peaceful
;onquest of the country, revolt or no revolt. The order of the
lay was summarized by one of the Zionist leaders :

" Let us retaliate, not by aggression and revenge, but by
giving an additional spurt to our constructive work. For every
one of our comrades who falls, let us build a new collective
settlement. Instead of evacuating the positions we hold, let us
conquer another piece of desert, reclaim another swamp, and
found new villages in Israel."

The process of founding new " points " collective settle-
ments in insecure areas was developed by Haganah into a

1 M. P. Waters, Haganah, London, 1946.

72 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

stereotyped routine. At night Haganah detachments occupied
the " point " generally a stony hill in the desert which had
seen no plough since Biblical times. At dawn a convoy of lorries
would arrive with prefabricated stockades, 'prefabricated living-
huts, plumbing, shower-bath and kitchen equipment ready for
assembly ; and, travelling on a caterpillar carrier, the centre of
the new settlement : the watch-tower, with its searchlight, whose
cyclopic eye was to survey the surrounding terrain and send its
twinkling signals to the nearest settlement ten or more miles away.
Haganah as a fighting force has always been guided as much
by ideological as by strategical principles. Its second main slogan
during the 1936-39 disturbances was " Havlagah ", the Hebrew
word for " self-restraint ". It was a striking contrast to all
traditions of civil warfare, to Arab vendetta ethics, and to the
aggressive tooth-for-tooth mentality of the Jewish extremist
groups. And in fact it was in protest against the ideology of
" self-restraint " that an extremist group split off Haganah in
1938 and founded the Irgun Z'vai Leumi (National Military
Organization). Under these circumstances and pressures, to
maintain the line of Havlagah was probably the most remarkable
achievement in the history of the future Israeli Army. Instead of
the usual trite military do-and-die exhortations, the leaders of
Haganah repeated indefatigably the same maxims :

" Your duty is to beat off attacks, but not to let the smell
of blood go to your heads. Remember that our meaning is in
our name, Defence, and that our only aim is to provide security
for creative work. Your organization is subordinate to this ideal ;
it is the instrument that enables us to live and work ; it is the
servant of our purpose ; it must never become its master."

The effects of the military and ideological discipline of this
illegal body of arms smugglers and conspirators were recognized
in the Royal Commission's Report :

" It is true . . . that in times of disturbance the Jews, as
compared with the Arabs, are the law-abiding section of the
population ; and, indeed, throughout the whole series of out-
breaks, and under very great provocation, they have shown a
notable capacity for discipline and self-restraint." x

It was the heyday of Anglo- Jewish cooperation ; never had
the negro appeared a snowier white. It is true that Haganah was
1 Royal Commission Report, p. 87.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 73

still illegal, and was to remain so to the end ; but it was a tongue-
in-cheek, almost affectionate kind of illegality. Whenever British
Police or troops, visiting a Jewish settlement after a fight, politely
enquired how things had gone, they were told that the attack of,
say, five hundred Arab raiders had been repulsed with the dozen
or so i2-bore rifles in the sealed cases ; and they accepted the
apparent miracle without blinking an eye. The real arms and
signalling apparatus had of course meanwhile been tucked away.
Had the authorities made a search and found the arms, they would
have had to confiscate them and arrest the settlers. But they made
no searches in those days. During the same period scores of
Arabs were hanged or sentenced to many years of prison if found
in possession of a rifle. Justice in Palestine.had become a function
of the political situation ; in fact a mockery. In this case the scales
were weighted in favour of the Jews ; after 1939 it was to be the
other way round.

4

Towards the end of 1936 the Administration went one step
further by appointing a number of Haganah men to act as a
Supernumerary Police Force, with the main task of defending
Jewish settlements. Some members of Haganah now enjoyed a
legal status ; but the organization itself remained theoretically
illegal. Another year later cooperation was carried even further
by the Military. Most British units had a Jewish " interpreter "
attached to them, who was in fact a liaison officer between the
British troops and the Haganah in that region. Then, late in 1937,
Captain Orde Wingate later Brigadier Wingate of Burma fame
arrived in Palestine. He came as a young intelligence officer,
but already possessed of those unorthodox ideas in strategy which
made his Chindit campaign one of the most brilliant adventures
Df the war. Apart from having his own ideas about strategy,
Wingate was a fervent Zionist of a mystical brand. After ^an
irduous campaign against the brass-hats, he obtained permission
;o recruit members of Haganah for his " Special Night Squads ",
ind to lead with their help his own guerilla war against the Arab

gangs.

The Special Night Squads played an important part in pro-
acting the pipe-line to Haifa and in clearing Fawzi's bands out of
Salilee. The experience thus gained by a picked elite of Haganah
nen proved invaluable ten years later. They had learned to beat

74 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

the Arabs at their own game of ambushing and hit-and-run raids.
In particular, they had learned to take advantage of the Arabs'
reluctance to fight, or even move, at night which was to become
the most important single factor in the defeat of the latter in 1948.
But, above all, the Jews discovered, much to their own surprise,
that they were better fighters than the Arabs not because the
Arabs were less brave, but because modern European Jews had a
greater capacity for initiative, improvisation and coordinated action
than their primitive adversaries.

The personality of Orde Wingate played an important part
in these events. The Jews of Palestine had developed an attitude
of hostile suspicion towards the English ; but they had the
characteristic Jewish capacity to fall into opposite extremes of
gratitude and enthusiastic loyalty to the Gentile who proved him-
self a friend. After a few months young Captain Wingate became
the most popular Englishman since Balfour among the Jews in
Palestine. The boys in Haganah, whom he submitted to a
rigorous and unorthodox training, worshipped him. They loved
him for his eccentric habits, his laconicism, his fluent mastery of
Hebrew and knowledge of the Bible. Stories about Wingate made
the round, and after his death in Burma grew into legends. He
had come to be regarded by the Jews as one of their own, a
Lawrence of the Hebrews.

The mystic touch in Wingate's relation to Israel became even
more evident when, ten years later, in the middle of the Arab-
Jewish war, his widow Lorna visited the country and, circling
in a tiny aeroplane over a Jewish settlement while it was being
attacked by Arab troops, dropped Wingate J s favourite Bible to
the defenders. 1

5

Approximately till the end of the 19205, the Jews in Palestine
were dependent on the protection of British arms. During the
next decade Jewish defence became gradually self-reliant and was
no longer in need of British help. By the end of the Arab revolt,
in 1939, Haganah knew that in the absence of British troops they
would not only be capable of holding their own against the Arabs,
but also of defeating them. The Jews were still a minority of
roughly one to two, but they controlled the economic key positions
of the country, had large continuous areas as well as a great

1 Cf. Book Two, Chapter II.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 75

lumber of isolated outposts in their possession, and had gained
:he upper hand in terms of military power. While nine out of ten
people in England, including the people who made British policy,
relieved that the British forces in Palestine were protecting the
fews against the Arabs, they were in fact potentially fulfilling the
opposite function. Potentially for the Jews had no aggressive
ntentions, provided they were permitted to continue immigrating
ind colonizing the land.

This was precisely what the White Paper of 1939 no longer
permitted them to do. The revolt of the Arabs was defeated, and
ewarded by the virtual abolition of the National Home. The
\nglo-Jewish honeymoon had come to an end. The men of
rlaganah, comrades in arms of yesterday, had reverted overnight
o the status of dangerous criminals.

Before the negro had changed colour, Arabs found in possession
>f arms were sent to jail or to the gallows, Jews were winked at.
Niihin six months from the issue of the White Paper the routine
f the Palestine military courts had changed to the exact opposite.
During the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940 British Police
.nd Army swooped down on Jewish settlements and Haganah
raining camps, confiscated their arms and arrested the leaders.
The most notable of these actions was directed against the Judaean
ettlement of Ben Shemen, which served as an agricultural board-
ng-school for 450 refugee children from 6 to 17 years of age. It
tad repeatedly been attacked by Arab gangs. In January 1940
Police search unearthed 27 rifles, 5 submachine-guns with
mmunition and 23 grenades concealed under a tiled floor. On
Lpril 22 a British military court sentenced eight members of the
taff to prison terms ranging from three to seven years. There
/as no suggestion even on the part of the prosecution that the
rms were intended for any purpose other than for defending the
chool against recurrent Arab attacks. The prosecution was in
act careful to point out that no aggressive intentions were imputed
3 the staff, but that the letter of the law had to be respected.

A similar fate overtook Wingate's famous Night Squads. One
f these units, whose members had all volunteered for service in
LM. Forces at the outbreak of the war, was rounded up by the
olice during one of its regular training exercises. The sentences
iflicted by the military tribunal were : prison for life for one man,
nd ten years of imprisonment for each of the remaining forty-two
len of the unit. Again the prosecution did not deny the loyalty

76 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the accused's intentions, and the verdict explicitly stated that
" intention [i.e. subversive intention] played no part in the
charge ".

More examples of a similar kind could be quoted. But this
is the point where tragedy became transformed into tragi-comedy.
While the military courts imposed these fantastic sentences, con-
fidential negotiations were carried on between the British Army
authorities and the Jewish Agency. Nothing that happened in
public between the Government and Haganah from this date on
can be taken at face value. Both were now playing the classic
oriental game of double-crossing. We have seen how the ambi-
guities of the Mandate had undermined the authority of the law,
subordinated jurisdiction to political considerations, and thereby
in fact reduced the whole administration of justice to a fa$ade
of unctuous pretence. The Twice Promised Land had become
a country rather like the Abyssinia of Evelyn Waugh's Black
Mischief.

Thus it became the practice to conclude agreements and
formal " truces " between the Administration, or some branch of
the Administration, on the one hand, and Haganah or Jewish
terrorist groups on the other. Men were put into jail for life or
for ten years, quietly released a year or two later, put into British
uniform to carry out some dangerous mission, and another year
or two later put back into jail again. The forty-three Haganah
members, for instance, whose trial we have just mentioned, first
had their sentences halved by the G.O.C., and, a little over a year
later, appeared in British uniforms on the battlefields of the
Middle East. When, in 1941, British troops invaded Vichy-held
Syria, they needed a vanguard of Commandos familiar with the
lay and language of the land. The obvious solution was to use
volunteers from the Jewish settlements along the Syrian border.
Haganah was approached to provide these, and provided a group
of its shock troops who crossed into Syria, disguised as Arabs,
ahead of the regular forces. Their task was to blow up bridges,
cut communications in the frontier area, and so on. They ac-
quitted themselves well. One of the group was Moshe Dayan,
son of a Jewish Labour leader from the agricultural settlement
Nahalal. Just a year before, he had been sentenced to ten years
by a British military court. In the Syrian campaign he lost an
eye and a finger serving with the British Army. But as the Palestine
censorship, for reasons to be explained later, suppressed all

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 77

mention of the fact that Jews had played a part in the Syrian
campaign, he remained for public purposes an amnestied criminal.
In August 1948 Dayan, still a slim youth under 30, with a black
patch over one eye, was appointed military commander of the
Israeli Army in Jerusalem. His opposite number was Brigadier
Leash, of the Arab Legion, a former British Police officer in
Palestine. Most of the Israeli Army leaders have similar careers
behind them.

While the military courts continued to dole out decades of
prison terms for the possession of illegal arms to members of
Haganah, a party, among others, of twenty-three Haganah men
left Haifa in a motor-boat in May 1941 with the task of blowing
up the oil refineries at Tripoli. They were commanded by a
British officer, Major Sir Anthony Palmer, and were equipped,
by request of the military authorities, with their own " illegal "
arms, as Middle East Command had at that time few arms to
spare. Their boat, the Sea-Lion, was never heard of again, nor
were any of the men.

The underhand dealings between British authorities and
Jewish terrorists were of an equally picturesque nature. In 1939
most of the leaders of the Irgun ZVai Leumi, including the
terrorist commander-in-chief David Raziel, were arrested and
taken to the detention camp of Latrun. When war was declared
on Germany, Irgun offered a " truce " to the authorities, which
was accepted. In May 1941, when the Mufti and Rashid Ali
proclaimed their Holy War against Britain from Baghdad, a
special party of Irgun terrorists was flown by the British Army
to Habaniyah, the British-held airfield near Baghdad. The party
consisted of David Raziel ; Jacob Viniarsky, alias Meridor ; a
Sephardi and a Yemenite Jew. Their task was to get into Baghdad
disguised as Arabs, to blow up oil installations, and to kidnap His
Excellency the Grand Mufti. On May 20, 1941, Raziel was killed
during an air bombardment and the action subsequently called
off. He was buried in the British military cemetery in Habaniyah ;
the inscription over his grave describes him as " Captain David
Raziel ", with the shield of David underneath.

It is a little-known fact thatthe first commander of the " terrorist
thugs " of the Irgun died in British service and was buried with
military honours. Had this not been the case he would doubtless
have shared the fate of Viniarsky-Meridor, who was rearrested
by the Palestine Government three years later and deported to

78 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Eritrea. He was released in 1948, and shortly afterwards re-
arrested by the Israeli Government for being involved in the
smuggling of arms in contravention of the U.N.O. Truce regula-
tions. The Holy Land is not an ideal school for forming law-
abiding citizens.

For a better understanding of this bewildering oriental
fantasia, the policies pursued during the war by the various
parties concerned must be shortly summarized.

* The Jewish attitude was summed up in 1939 by David Ben
Gurion, later Prime Minister of Israel, in the formula : " We
shall fight with Great Britain in this war as if there were no White
Paper. And we shall fight the White Paper as if there were
no war."

That the Jews had every interest to side with Great Britain
against their mortal enemy, Hitlerism, is self-evident. It is
equally evident that they had to continue to fight the immigration
bar imposed by their allies and rulers. And thirdly, they were
naturally determined to get the whole political benefit of their
war sacrifices. As soon as war broke out, some 130,000 Palestine
Jews of military age of both sexes voluntarily registered for armed
service in H.M. Forces. But they registered not directly with
the British authorities, 1 but through the Jewish Agency, which
compiled the list of volunteers for a Jewish regiment. A Jewish
regiment had already fought under British command in the First
World War. Now the intention was to create a similar corps
recruited exclusively from Palestinian Jews which, apart from
fighting the enemy, would become an invaluable asset for Zionist
propaganda, strengthen the national oAisciousness, provide the
Jews with expert military training, and thereby become a poten-
tially decisive factor in a possible local showdown after the
war.

This was precisely what the British were determined to avoid
at any price, even at the price of leaving the sources of Jewish
manpower and war enthusiasm untapped. Once Britain had,
rightly or wrongly, set her course on the White Paper policy, i.e.
on a lasting settlement with the Arab world at the expense of
Zionism, it was better to have no Jewish Army than to risk

1 As Palestine was a Mandated Territory its citizens were not subject to
conscription.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 79

creating a kind of Trojan horse. Furthermore, Jewish eagerness
to get to the head of the queue in the anti- Axis fight was considered
likely to push the Arabs even further into the arms of the Axis.
The Government's policy was to avoid every irritant to Arab
public opinion, such as the very mention of the word Zionism ;
the faintest suggestion that the war was being fought for the sake
of the Jews ; and any criticism of the pro- Axis activities of the
Grand Mufti. Even the fact that the Nazis were persecuting Jews
was to be kept as far as possible secret, as likely to awaken Arab
sympathies for the former. British Middle East Arab broadcasts
featured items such as the allegation that Hitler was employing
a Jewish house physician, followed by some mention that the
Royal Household drank Arab coifee. The implication was evi-
dently that Hitler was harbouring pro-Jewish sympathies, and
hence a bad man, while the King of England took the opposite,
correct view of the Jews, and was a good man.

The Arabs, as the third party in the triangle, were in the most
advantageous position. They played a simple waiting game to
see which party proved the stronger, and to side with it at the
proper moment. It was a natural policy for an oriental country
designed to achieve the maximum immunity from European
interference by following the way of least resistance, and by
exploiting the clash of interests between two European camps.
In the spring of 1941, when France had fallen, when Britain stood
alone and her chances were at the lowest ebb, the Mufti and
Hitler's puppet Prince Rashid Ali called for a Holy War on the
side of the Axis. The response of the other Arab States, garri-
soned by Allied troops and still doubtful about the final outcome,
was lukewarm, and confined to telegrams of official sympathy,
the usual student demonstrations and platonic assertions of the
solidarity of the Arab world, The swift collapse of the Rashid
Ali revolt should have shaken British faith in Arab strength
and solidarity; but once more the experts disregarded the
warning.

While the Iraqis revolted, the Syrians and Lebanese accepted
because of the obvious weakness of France the rule of Vichy
with a little less hostility than subsequent Allied rule. A con-
fidential British intelligence digest of the period described all the
main Syrian political parties as being in Axis pay. (The one
notable exception was the Populist Party, which disintegrated
after the murder of its leader by Arab extremists.) The Egyptians

80 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

suffered the use of their country as a British base with the sullen
hostility which characterized Anglo-Egyptian relations both before
and after the war. The arrest of the Egyptian Chief of Staff at
the moment of his intended departure from Cairo airport with a
brief-case full of British military secrets, and the British ultimatum
to King Farouk, supported by a detachment of tanks milling round
the gardens of the Royal Palace, are episodes too well known to
need detailed description.

In Palestine itself the respective attitudes of Jews and Arabs
were expressed in figures of voluntary recruitment : while despite
all official discouragement more than 30,000 Jews joined the British
forces, the corresponding number of Arab volunteers, out of a
population twice as big, was 9000 in other words, the ratio of
Jewish to Arab volunteers was as six to one. Despite the White
Paper with its immigration bar and promise of an independent
Arab State in Palestine, despite the extremes to which the policy
of appeasement was carried by the turning away of Jewish refugee
ships, the Arabs remained hostile and unconvinced. Portraits of
the Mufti were distributed openly throughout the country and
displayed in Arab homes ; entire Arab villages refused to comply
with black-out regulations, for Arab whisper propaganda had told
them that Axis bombers would spare them and destroy only Jewish
settlements. In the days of El Alamein mysterious chalked signs
kept appearing on Jewish houses ; they were meant as indications
that this or th^t Arab citizen had staked his claim to the house in
question, to be redeemed when Rommel's victorious troops had
chased both the British and the Jews into the sea. But as the
parallel trend in the neighbouring countries indicated, anti-British
feeling existed independently of the Zionist issue. It was the
natural expression of the desire for independence, and of the
traditional anti-European attitude of Islam. To assume that once
the stumbling-block of Zionism was removed, Arab xenophobia
would cease, was a miscalculation as naive as the belief that once
the stumbling-block of the Sudetens was removed the Nazis
would become peaceful citizens of Europe. A century of British
and French experience in Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries
was convincing proof that even if the half a million Jews in
Palestine were made to vanish from the face of the earth, anti-
European agitation would at once find another peg. The following
text of a leaflet which was distributed in Syria during the anti-
French riots of 1945 is typical of hundreds of others :

THE RISE OF HAGANAH Si

" If you wish to avoid further calamities, and
If you have a noble Arabic heart in your chest, and fresh

Arabic blood in your veins, and
If you are anxious to do your duty towards your country

then you must do the following :

No more * bonjour ' or * bonsoir ' or * au revoir ' or * pardon ',
No more French newspapers or French magazines or French

culture,
No more French goods."

By substituting for " French " the words " English " or
" Jewish ", according to the case, one gets the general atmosphere
of Arab nationalism.

These, then, were the three principal protagonists on the
Palestine stage during the war. The intricate oriental game was
further complicated by splits and conflicts inside each of the three
camps. The British military authorities and various intelligence
branches played a game which frequently clashed with the policy
of the Civilian Administration. The anti-Husseini cliques in the
Arab camp tried to destroy the Mufti's prestige on grounds of his
alliance with Hitler, much to the distaste of the Palestine Adminis-
tration. Finally, the bitter hatred between Haganah and the
Jewish terrorist groups led to a squalid game of denunciations,
kidnappings and double-crossings which the Administration was
delighted to exploit for its own purposes.

A full chronicle of the part-tragic, part-grotesque and some-
times quite surrealistic events which were produced by this
complex field, of forces would be rather like the detailed verbal
description of an oriental carpet. We must confine ourselves to
picking out some of the main threads.

7

As mentioned before, the Jews wanted a Jewish regiment under
British command, and the Mandatory Administration was deter-
mined not to have a Jewish regiment at any price. Out of this
conflict of policies the most paradoxical consequences followed.
The 130,000 young Jews and Jewesses who had registered as
volunteers with the Jewish Agency became the target of an official
discouragement campaign. The very mention of the existence
of the Jewish Agency's recruiting office was banned by the censor.
Moreover, any news item associating Jews with the war effort

G

82 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

was suppressed. This led to absurdities like the following two
censored items. 1 The words suppressed by the censor are in
square brackets, and those substituted by the censor in round
brackets.

"30.1.43. Tel Aviv, Saturday. c The Army still wants
recruits *, declared the Deputy District Recruiting officer
yesterday afternoon, when he called upon a large audience in
the Mograbi Cinema to look upon themselves as recruiting
agents.

" The rally and cinema display was featured by films of views
from the Russian front, and a picture devoted to Winston
Churchill. [Jewish and Scottish] (Two) military bands per-
formed."

Or:

" 18.1.42. Tel Aviv. Men who have been trained for
port work are invited [to apply to the Jewish Agency's recruiting
Department] to register in connection with the formation of a
[Jewish] port operating company. A re-organized [Jewish] port
operating company is to be formed for service with the British
military forces, and all persons with port experience and training
and those wishing to serve are invited to register immediately
[with the Jewish Agency recruiting office in Jerusalem, Tel
Aviv and Haifa]."

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, the item refers to
a specifically Jewish port operating company, which the Army
wanted, and whose formation had been approved by the military
authorities. The impossible task which the Palestine Government
had set itself was to recruit Jews in their National Home on the
iderstanding that they were to forget that they were Jews, that
no reference was to be made in Press or public to this inconvenient
fact, and that no credit whatsoever for their actions should accrue
to the Jewish community. Two more examples of this :

" i .7.43. Palestine [Jewry] was represented in the United
Nations march past reviewed by the Governor of Bombav on
April 27. ..."

" 17.6.43. The tenth anniversary of Pales Press Co., Ltd.,
was celebrated yesterday when the management entertained
members of their staff at a reception. . . . The staff presented

1 The Editor of the Palestine Post has collected several hundred similar
curiosities ; a selection of them is published in Trevor, op. cit.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 83

the management with a cheque of 50 to be used as. a donation
for the [Jewish] underground press in occupied territories."

As one writer has put it, 1 the war effort of the Jews in Palestine
was the best-kept secret of the war in the Middle East. No
mention of the Jewish Commando units in the Syrian or Libyan
campaigns, of the fifty Haganah volunteers parachuted into enemy
territory (half of whom were never heard of again), was permitted
for several years to appear in the local Press. As for words like
" Zionism " or " National Home ", they fell under the censor's
axe even if uttered by Winston Churchill. On July 30, 1941, a
parliamentary question by Mr. Lipson, " Whether His Majesty's
Government still adhered to the policy of establishing a National
Home for Jews in Palestine ", was answered by the Prime Minister,
who stated that there had been no change in the policy of His
Majesty's Government with regard to Palestine. Question and
answer were both stopped by the Palestine censor.

Despite systematic discouragement, insults and sneers, out of
the 130,000 whose original registration with the Jewish Agency's
recruiting office had been ignored, round 30,000 Palestine Jews
served, as already mentioned, in the British forces. They did so,
needless to say, not for love of the English, but to fight the Axis
and to serve their own well-understood interests. After five years
of a grotesque tug-of-war between the Jewish Agency and the
British authorities, in the course of which British Cabinet decisions
were reversed under pressure of the local Administration, and the
question whether Jewish R.A.S.C. drivers in the Libyan desert
should be allowed to paint a Shield of David on their trucks was
an object of grave deliberations at G.H.Q., the Jews were finally
permitted, in the autumn of 1944, to form their own " Jewish
Brigade Group ".

Jewish perseverance had scored against the set policy of the
Administration a victory which had been more difficult to achieve
than draining marshes or defeating Arab raiders. The Palestine
Administration had been overruled mainly by Winston Churchill's
personal intervention. Yet within the framework of British Middle
East policy from 1939 to this day, the Palestine Administration
was logically right. The' veterans of the Jewish Brigades became,
exactly as the Administration had foreseen, the nucleus of the
future Israeli Army and the decisive factor of the Arab defeat,

1 Pierre Van Paassen, The Forgotten Ally, New York, 1943.

84 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

which, as things were, amounted to a defeat of British policy.

If the policy of the Palestine Administration, as expressed in
its censorship regulations, was to suppress all reference to the
Jewish war effort, any allusion to the Mufti's pro-Axis activities
was equally taboo. After the collapse of the Iraqi revolt the Grand
Mufti had betaken himself to Berlin, from where he broadcast
anti-Allied propaganda in Arabic, organized the levy of an S.S.
regiment of Bosnian Moslems, prepared memoranda about the
campaign to exterminate the Jews and pursued other activities
of a similar nature, which led to his subsequent inclusion in the
British List of War Criminals. The following is a sample from the
Mufti's Arabic broadcasts from Berlin, recorded by the United
States Monitoring Service on March 4, 1944 : " Arabs ! Rise as
one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you
find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves
your honour. God is with you." 1

Obviously the only sane propaganda line for the British would
have been to mobilize Arab public opinion against the Mufti's
party in Palestine. In view of Arab jealousies and dissensions
this would have been all the easier to do, as condemnations of the
Mufti were readily forthcoming from his rivals among the Arab
princes and statesmen, including Emir, later King, Abdullah of
Transjordan. Instead of being used as weapons to discredit the
Mufti, these statements were, strange as it sounds, barred by the
Palestine censorship. The two following items, among many
others, may serve as examples (words suppressed by the censor
in square brackets, words inserted by the censor in round brackets).

[" 15.3 .42. c DISCREDITED Axis TOOL.' New York, Sunday
(ANA). Haj Amin, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, who is now
shuttling between Rome and Berlin collaborating with the
Axis in anti-democratic propaganda, has lost his prestige in the
Arab world, according to the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan.

" The Emir told Cyrus L. Sulzberger, correspondent of the
New York Times, in an interview, that Haj Amin was now
regarded merely as an Axis tool who had sold himself to the
Italians."]

The whole item was suppressed by the censor ; the Palestine
Arabs were not allowed to know that Abdullah, son of the Caliph
Hussein and the most popular Arab prince in the Middle East,
condemned the Mufti for siding with the enemy.

1 Quoted from B. C. Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, New York, 1947.

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 85

" 18 . 3 . 42. New York, Tuesday (AN). Violent attacks on
[Haj Amin el-Husseini, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, for his
association] (those who cooperate) with the Axis are published
by the Arab press throughout the United States. * This is our
war . . .' writes Al-Hoda. * Anyone who helps the enemies of
America and her allies is our enemy, whether he be [Mufti,
Patriarch] (religious hater) or layman.' "

8

Two main threads in the oriental carpet remain to be shortly
summarized : the continuation of the double-dealings between
Administration and Haganah, and the growth of Jewish terrorism.

In the summer of 1942 RommePs Afrika Korps had driven the
British forces back across the Libyan desert into Egypt. In Russia
the German troops were advancing rapidly towards the Caucasus.
A giant pincer movement threatened to crack the Middle East
like a ripe nut in its claws. It was the last major military crisis
of the Allies. Stalingrad, Alamein and the invasion of North
Africa were still events in the unknown future. Egypt was
threatened by immediate peril and, if Egypt went, Palestine could
not be held.

As always at critical moments, when British and Jewish
interests were simultaneously threatened, the British Military and
the leaders of Haganah got together over the wagging heads of
the Palestine Administration. The Afrika Korps in 1942 was a
unifying agent, as Kaukaji's bands had been in 1937-38 ; a second
Anglo- Jewish honeymoon on the level of military cooperation
began. A few weeks after the sinking of the Struma, and after
Lord Cranborne had communicated to the Jewish Agency that
His Majesty's Government's policy was, and would continue to
be, " that nothing whatever will be done to facilitate the arrival
of Jewish refugees in Palestine ", along another thread of the
carpet agreement was reached between Haganah and a special
branch of Middle East Headquarters, known as G.S.I.(J.), and
commanded by Major-General B. T. Wilson. The agreement
provided for the arming and training of Haganah guerilla groups
which were to operate as a maquis in the case of RommeFs entry
into Palestine. These groups were set the task of cutting German
communications in the rear of the withdrawing British forces in
southern Palestine ; of establishing a secret radio network through-
out the country to keep contact with the Allies during the German

50 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

occupation ; and so on. At the same time, the Jewish Agency's
intelligence service in the other Arab countries was to be put at
the disposal of the British Army. It was a purely military agree-
ment with no political conditions attached to it; for it was
naturally not in the power of a secret branch of the British Army
to abrogate the White Paper or change immigration policy.

It need not be emphasized that it required more than ordinary
courage for a Jew to volunteer for such a task. A Frenchman
parachuted into France or a Greek into Greece could hope to
merge with the colourless mass of the politically indifferent crowd.
But in a Nazi-occupied Palestine every Jew would be suspect
provided that he lived to be suspected. On the other hand, the
chances of a general massacre were such that to take additional
risks hardly made much difference. In theory at least, for in
practice it is easi^r-for most people to trot meekly to the slaughter-
house vrith the "rest of the crowd. These considerations are men-
tiofied because they illustrate the predicament and the state of
mind prevailing among Jews in any Nazi-occupied territory.
Considerations of this kind decided habitually over-cautious
Jewish mothers to embark with their children on the small,
unseaworthy death ships, or to take to the forests of the Ukraine
and Poland with Jewish guerilla bands ; or the meek inhabitants
of the Warsaw ghetto to rise and die in hopeless revolt.

A considerable part of the population of Jewish Palestine are
refugees, who have only survived and finally reached its forbidden
shores by having at one time or another taken the additional risk
and played for all or nothing. This is one of the decisive factors
in the gradual transformation of the once peaceful and law-abiding
pioneer community into a nation with an unusually high pro-
portion of terrorists and bitter Maccabeans.

Fortunately, however, for all concerned, Rommel was beaten
back and the Palestine maquis did not come into being. The
whole episode ended with a typically Palestinian twist. The
British had established a secret training school for the prospective
guerillas of Haganah in the hill country south-east of Haifa. After
the victory of Alamein, when it became clear to the Haganah
volunteers that their services would not be required and that the
honeymoon was at an end, they broke one night into the training-
school and made off with the arms in it a considerable haul.
Since the aftermath of the Wingate episode before the military
courts, Haganah had lost its innocence and was getting wise to

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 87

the game. Henceforth they were going to play it with all the
cynicism of the policy applied to them.

As the tide of the war had turned and Jewish help was no
longer needed, the Police and the military courts set to work again
to discover secret arms whose existence had been no secret a few
months before. Among their more spectacular feats were arms
searches in isolated settlements like Hulda l and Ramat Hakovesh,
carried out in the manner of major military operations (Ramat
Hakovesh, a settlement of 140 men, was surrounded by a task
force of 800 Indian troops) and with a new provocative brutality.
The searches were the Administration's first serious attempt to
smash Haganah in good and earnest. They caused immediate
mass protests and riots, which showed that a thorough combing-
out for illegal arms of the one hundred-odd communal settlements,
not to mention the towns and villages, would lead to a full-dress
Jewish rising. This the Palestine Government could not afford,
either strategically or politically. The attempt to crush Haganah
had for the time being to be abandoned.

Instead, the Administration resorted to the eccentric and rather
un-British expedient of staging several show-trials, of which the
most spectacular was held in August 1943. Two British privates,
Stoner and Harris, both of whom had previously committed a
variety of crimes, including forgery, theft and desertion, were
court-martialled on a charge of being in illegal possession of 300
American rifles and 125,000 rounds of ammunition, with the
intent to sell them to the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, David
Ben Gurion. The court-martial lasted no less than thirty-four
days ; American newspaper correspondents in Cairo were
specially invited to attend ; the whole affair was conducted in a
blaze of publicity and in an atmosphere of theatrical unreality
reminiscent of Russian show-trials. Ben Gurion was assigned the
diabolical role of Trotsky : he had been recognized, fro.m a
photograph, as a man seen by one of the accused in a Haifa cafe,
in the company of the chief of a vast arms-trafficking gang. This
gang was described by the defending officer as a subsidiary of the
Jewish Agency and the " cancer in the Middle East war effort ".
Counsel for the defence proceeded to explain that it was necessary
to broadcast this fact to the Allied nations so that they should be
able to revise their policy towards the Jews. He concluded by
declaring that the two accused soldiers " should be made world-

1 Cf. p. 71.

88 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

famous " because, thanks to them, facts had been unearthed about
the attitude of the Jews towards the war effort which might affect
the policy of His Majesty's Government.

By that time the atmosphere and language in the military courts
and in the officers' messes had by far surpassed what one might
call the normal degree of anti-Semitism, and was showing the
definite influence of National ^Socialist ideology. The " vast
conspiracy ", the " cancer in the war effort ", the unearthing of
a sensational " truth about the Jews " were not improvisations
of a misguided and over-zealous defending officer, but the core
and purpose of a carefully staged and broadcast show-trial. The
trial was to serve the twofold aim of exonerating the Palestine
Administration's dark record, from the Struma to the cold pogrom
against Haganah, while at the same time discrediting Palestine
Jewry in the eyes of world public opinion. This tendency cul-
minated in the famous order of the day of the G.O.C. Palestine,
Lieut-General Sir Evelyn Barker, of July 26, 1947, which put
all Jewish premises out of bounds for British troops, imposed a
ban on fraternization with Jews, and ended with the words :

" I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship
on the troops, yet I am certain that if my reasons are fully ex-
plained to them they will understand their propriety and will be
punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by
striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them."

The plain facts behind the show-trials are that Haganah did,
of course, purchase " illegal " arms wherever they could lay their
hands on them, and that Stoner and Harris had very likely
negotiated about arms sales with members of Haganah (though
the story about the Chairman of the Jewish Agency discussing
such matters in a Haifa cafe is an obvious fabrication designed to
provide a missing link in an incomplete chain of evidence, accord-
ing to the classic practice in show-trials of this sort). That
Haganah was buying illegal arms, just as they were bringing in
illegal refugees, was a fact known to the Administration for a
quarter of a century ; tolerated at periods, penalized at others,
but certainly no news. The sensational staging of the trials had
nothing to do with the administration of justice or the maintenance
of law and order of which illegal Jewish arms had, as we saw,
formed an integral part; they served purely political purposes
and were part of a deliberate smear-campaign waged by the

THE RISE OF HAGANAH 89

Palestine Administration against the Jewish National Home.

It may not be without interest to note that, at the precise time
when the military court in Jerusalem broadcast its tale of the
Jewish cancer in the war effort to all those willing to listen, the
first Haganah volunteers for British intelligence work in Nazi-.
occupied Europe were parachuted into the Balkans in a suitable
absence of publicity.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RISE OF TERRORISM

" An eye for an eye " versus " Thou shalt not kill "
Polish revolutionaries and " coloured Jews " The eti-
quette of terrorism Abraham Stern, the gunman poet
The split between Irgun and Stern Death of Raziel
and Stern Arrival of Menachem Beigin Friedman-
Yellin's escape from Latrun Haganah's illegal war
against the terrorists Kidnappings and denunciations
Ambiguity of the Zionist attitude

THE ideological background of Jewish terrorism, as well as the
ethical problem which it posed for the renascent nation, will be
discussed in a later chapter. At present only the main events in
the rise of the terrorist movements will be outlined.

It will be remembered that during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39
Haganah's set policy was expressed by the slogan Havlagah,
self-restraint. Rejection of this policy and a belief that not
passive defence but only active retaliation would act as a deterrent
to the Arabs were the main causes which led to the foundation of
Irgun ZVai Leumi. Haganah adhered to a Socialist philosophy
and obeyed the orders of the Socialist-controlled Jewish Agency.
Irgun owed political allegiance to the Revisionists, the extreme
nationalist wing which in 1935 had split off the official Zionist
Movement and founded its own " New Zionist Organization ".
Haganah had a kind of semi-legal status which varied according
to the political constellation ; Irgun was from the beginning
organized on the strictly conspiratorial lines of a terrorist under-
ground movement. Its relations to the New Zionist Organization
were much looser than those between Haganah and Jewish
Agency ; Irgun was virtually an independent military organization
which only took orders from its own " High Command ". Its
rank and file was recruited from the Revisionist Youth Organiza-
tion Betar, and from the "coloured Jews" Yemenites and
Sephardis for whom its flowery, chauvinistic phraseology had

90

THE RISE OF TERRORISM QI

a particular appeal. These oriental Jews were eventually to
constitute about one-half of Irgun's total strength, while the
leaders were almost exclusively young intellectuals who had grown
up in the Polish revolutionary tradition. This created the peculiar
ideological climate of Irgun a mixture of that quixotic patriotism
and romantic chivalry which characterized the Polish student
revolutionaries, with the archaic ferocity of the Bible and the
Books of the Maccabees. It found its literary expression in the
remarkable Bible-and-gun poetry of Abraham Stern, a student of
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who, together with his
fellow-student David Raziel, was the initiator of Irgun.

Up to the inauguration of the White Paper policy, the Irgun
concentrated its activities on smuggling illegal immigrants from
Central Europe into Palestine. It received active help and arms
from the Polish Government, who wished nothing better than to
get rid of their Jews and to embarrass the British. Its first large-
scale terrorist action took place in February 1939, when, after a
series of Arab outrages against Jewish civilians, Irgun members
hurled bombs into the crowded Arab markets of all the big
towns of Palestine at a prearranged hour, killing scores of Arab
men, women and children. Never before had Jews retaliated
with indiscriminate murder, and the condemnation of the act by
the Jewish Agency and the Zionist bodies abroad was genuine
and spontaneous. Haganah issued leaflets against Irgun headed
by the Sixth Commandment : " Thou shalt not kill ". Irgun's
secret radio-transmitter answered with Exodus xxi, 23-25 : " Life
for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for
burning ". The fight between the two rival resistance groups was
on. In this first phase it was merely an ideological battle, fought
with Bible quotations in the illegal Press and on the illegal air.

In the summer of 1939 the leaders of Irgun, including Raziel
and Stern, were arrested. Several of them were tortured by order
of a certain Police Inspector Cairns. Irgun first sent a warning,
then passed " sentence of death " on Cairns, which it communi-
cated to the Mandatory Government. Despite elaborate pre-
cautions, Cairns and a second inspector were killed by an Irgun
bomb in August 1939. It was the first anti-British terror act of
the Irgun and it displayed already all the features of rocambolesque
etiquette, the strict observance of an elaborate " code of honour ",
which was to characterize its actions till the end. This self-
imposed code included, inter alia, the rules that no British military

92 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

installations were to be damaged for the duration of the war;
that before attacking an administrative building or Police station
due warning must be given in writing or by telephone, so as to
enable its occupants to evacuate it ; that during each " military
action " the " soldiers " of Irgun must wear armlets in lieu of
uniform ; that " executions " must be preceded by a verdict of
Irgun *s " military court " and communicated in proper form to
the accused ; that after each action. Irgun must take public
responsibility for it by means of posters and radio announcements ;
and, finally, the unconditional refusal to engage in acts of violence
and retaliation against members of Haganah or any other Jew.
In exchange, Irgun claimed that prisoner-of-war status should be
accorded to its men if captured by the British.

Legally, of course, the whole construction was absurd. But
until its final dissolution in September 1948, Irgun strictly ob-
served its own code. The discipline among its members was
exemplary, and no actions were perpetrated except by order of
the leaders.

2

At the outbreak of the war a formal truce was concluded, as
mentioned before, between Irgun and the Palestine Government ;
it lasted until the Struma tragedy. The leaders of Irgun were
released from detention and employed on special military missions
for the British forces, much in the same way as members of the
Haganah. RaziePs death in action during the Iraqi revolt in
May 1941 has already been related.

This truce led to a split in the Irgun, with fatal consequences
for Israel. Abraham Stern, the fanatic gunman-poet, denounced
the truce as a capitulation and left the Irgun, taking with him the
greater part of its cadres and arms. Thus came into being the
" Fighters for the Freedom of Israel ",* commonly known as
the Stern Gang. The Sternists were believers in unrestricted and
indiscriminate terror. They derided Irgun's scrupulous observ-
ance of underground etiquette as quixotry and phoney warfare.
Irgun concentrated after the truce on the destruction of Police
stations and Government offices, trying to avoid casualties as far
as passible ; the Sternists ambushed British policemen and
soldiers, and shot them at sight. Both terrorist groups made a

1 In Palestine the group is usually referred to by its initials as " L.E.H.Y."
(LoJimey Heruth Israel}.

THE RISE OF TERRORISM 93

point of assuming public responsibility for each of their actions,
but even without this the public and Police knew at once which
group had committed which act, so different were their methods
and objectives.

During the decisive years of the war, from 1939 to the end
of 1943, terrorism was no more than a sporadic nuisance. All in
all, 8 Jewish, 6 Arab and i r British policemen were killed during
this period. Abraham Stern himself was trapped by police in
his hiding-place in Tel Aviv and shot in the back " while trying
to escape ", according to classic tradition. The gang was tem-
porarily broken up and a number of its leaders arrested with the
active cooperation of Haganah. Irgun had not yet recovered from
the death of Raziel and the consequences of the split ; thus until
the beginning of 1944 both terrorist groups were temporarily out
of action.

In 1943 Menachem Beigin, a young Revisionist lawyer from
Warsaw, arrived in Palestine with General Anders* Polish Army.
An exceptionally gifted organizer and propagandist, he succeeded
within a few months in resurrecting the Irgun. At about the
same time the Stern Group managed a series of spectacular
escapes. Twenty of its leaders broke out in November 1943 from
the concentration camp at Latrun, after digging a tunnel 45 yards
long through rocky ground. The tunnel had electric ventilation
and lighting, and for some time after was shown to trustworthy
tourists with a certain pride by the British personnel of the camp.
The escape was planned and led by Abraham Stern's successor,
science graduate David Friedman- Yellin. Shortly afterwards two
more Sternists managed to break out by equally ingenious methods
from the Central Prison in Jerusalem.

The leaders of the Jewish Agency have accused the Mandatory
Administration, in more or less veiled terms, of having deliber-
ately let the Stern leaders escape in order to exploit the renewal
of terrorism against the Jewish community, and to intensify the
internal strife among the Jews. This is another pattern of the
oriental carpet ; it illustrates how far mutual distrust had gone.
The British accused the Jewish Agency of being a cancer in the
war effort ; the Agency had an equally " diabolic " theory of
British connivance in the terrorists* escape. For a variety of
technical reasons, the theory is highly improbable, and a more
natural explanation for the recurrent escapes is to be found in the
slackness and muddle of oriental prisons. The story ends with

94 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

another typically Palestinian twist : five years later, after the
murder of Count Bernadotte, members of the Stern Group staged
a no less spectacular jail-break, and this time it was the Israeli
Government who beca'ine the object of diabolic suspicions.

Thus early in 1944 both terrorist groups were ready for action
again. Irgun blew up a number of Government offices and Police
stations, and captured a sizeable haul of arms ; on May 15, 1944,
they even succeeded in temporarily occupying the Government
Broadcasting Station in Ramallah. They continued to give warn-
ing before each attack so that, as far as can be ascertained from
Press reports, the number of British Police killed in all these
actions did not exceed two. It is worth mentioning that a letter
from Dr. Weizmann expressing " grief as well as horror and
indignation " about Jewish terrorism, and published by the
London Times on February 18, 1944, was banned by the Palestine
censor.

The Stern Group meanwhile was pursuing its own line of
direct action. In August 1944 an abortive attempt was made on
the life of the departing High Commissioner, Sir Harold Mac-
Michael, whom the Jews of Palestine held personally responsible
for the Struma disaster and for the Administration's anti-Jewish
policy. In September, four 'Police stations were attacked and
a Police constable murdered. In October Britain's Resident
Minister in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, was murdered in
Cairo by two members of the Stern Group, both under 20. One
of them was Ben Hakim the boy who had watched the blowing
up of the Patria in Haifa harbour l and, according to a statement
of members of his family to this writer, had never recovered
mentally from the consequence of the shock. Both young men
were hanged.

The Moyne murder shook the Zionist world to the core. The
Jewish leaders felt that if terrorism *was allowed to continue, not
only the British public, but world opinion would turn against
them. To avert this danger, the Jewish Agency mobilized
Haganah against Irgun and the Stern Group ; while the official
Zionist bodies and the Hebrew Press exhorted the public to
cooperate with the British Police against the terrorists. But the
great majority of the Jews in Palestine turned a deaf ear to these
appeals. They disapproved of terrorist methods, but at the same
time refused to act as informers against their own people, or to

1 Cf. p. 6of.

THE RISE OF TERRORISM 95

deny shelter to hunted men. To cooperate with the Police in the
tracking down of political outlaws creates, even under normal
conditions, a dilemma for the normal citizen. In Palestine both
the citizens and the conditions had long passed beyond the stage
of normality. The Police no longer felt compelled to hide its
anti- Jewish feelings ; each week brought new tales of third-
degreeing of Jews, and new public insults. 1 The authority which
the Jews were told to defend was the authority which upheld the
White Paper, the immigration and land transfer laws, the savage
sentences of the military courts. The policy of the Administration,
which for years had turned law and order into a mockery, was
beginning to bear its poisoned fruit.

3

It was a different matter with Haganah. Its members were
subjected to an intensive political as well as military training.
They saw in the terrorist groups not only a danger to Zionism,
but also a political rival and ideologically the arch-enemy. Above
all, they were a disciplined body of men, and if the Jewish Agency
ordered them to collaborate with the Police they had no choice
but to obey the order.

As Haganah was itself an illegal body, without official status
and without legal arms, it was obviously not in a position to arrest
terrorists. All suggestions of the Jewish Agency that some form
of legal status be accorded to specially picked anti-terrorist

1 The following censored report from the Palestine Post of 21.9.45 is
characteristic of the atmosphere prevailing at that time (words suppressed by
the censor in square brackets) :

" A serious charge against a British Police Constable, No. noo, has been
lodged with the Attorney-General and the Inspector-General of Police by
Mr. George T. Elia, the Jerusalem lawyer.

" Mr. Elia complained that while walking in the Street of the Prophets,
at 11.30 P.M. on Sunday night, he was jumped upon by a dog. As he tried
to drive the animal off, a British Constable in uniform allegedly asked : * Who
gave you permission to speak to another dog ? * [When] Mr. Elia replied
that he was afraid of the animal, [the Constable allegedly said : * Anyhow,
shut up, you dirty, bloody Jew/ Mr. Elia said that he was not a Jew and
produced his identity card, to which the Constable is reported to have re-
marked, ' Anyway, you're a dirty native.* The lawyer protested,] and was
taken to the Machne Yehuda Police Station, where the Constable wanted to
arrest him and pushed him into the lock-up. When Mr. Elia wanted to get
in touch with a superior officer, the Constable allegedly hit him in the eye,
rendering him unconscious."

96 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Haganah squads were rejected by the -British, authorities. This
put the leaders of the Agency into the unenviable dilemma, either
to sit back, watch the ineffectual attempts of the Police to track
down the terrorists, and be accused of passive complicity ; or to
turn their own resistance movement, the nucleus of the future
Jewish Army, into a body of temporary Police informers. They
chose the second course, with consequences which will be dis-
cussed later. During the months following the Moyne murder,
a list of the names and hiding-places of round four hundred
leading members of Irgun and Stern Group was handed over by
the Political Department of the Jewish Agency to the British
authorities. Haganah furthermore made a practice of warning
the Government of terrorist actions in preparation, and, for
instance, prevented the Government's Secretariat in the King
David Hotel in Jerusalem from being blown up at that time. All
this, however, did not suffice to stamp out terrorism ; so the para-
dox was carried qne step further when the illegal Haganah
proceeded to enforce law and order by the illegal means of kid-
napping and trapping their underground rivals. In December
1944 and January 1945, special Haganah detachments abducted
from their homes a number of young men, who were mostly not
directly connected with terrorism but members of the Revisionist
Party, and suspected of being in the know about terrorist arms
caches and hiding-places. The kidnapped men were put into
Haganah " prisons " that is, into a guarded house in one of
the politically reliable collective settlements and were inter-
rogated by Haganah Intelligence men. The third-degree methods
employed during these interrogations were in some cases on a
par with those sporadically used by the Palestine C.I.D. Political
Branch. The seed which the Government had sown kept pro-
ducing its poisoned flowers. In the general atmosphere of mock-
legality and official double-dealing, no group or party could
remain immune against the germs of moral corruption.

Though the kidnappings were stopped as they attracted too
much public attention, collaboration between Haganah and
British Police against the terrorists continued for roughly one
year from the Moyne murder in October 1944 until Mr.
Bevin's first fateful statement on Palestine in November 1945.
This time, however, there could be no question of a honeymoon,
as in the days of the Arab Revolt or of El Alamein ; it was a
partnership, enforced by circumstances, which both parties equally

THE RISE OF TERRORISM 97

detested. No credit was given to the Jewish Agency, either during
or at any time after this period, for the loathsome task which it
had considered its duty to undertake. Nor did the arms searches,
arrests of Haganah members and military. trials cease. While
Haganah men hunted down terrorists they continued to be hunted
themselves. A highlight in this tragi-comedy was the arrest in
January 1945 of a young Haganah member, acting as special
bodyguard to Mr. Shertok, and his sentence to six months'
imprisonment for being in possession of a revolver and fourteen
cartridges. Mr. Shertok was head of the Political Department of
the Jewish Agency in whose offices the fight against terrorism was
centred.

In spite of all this, the uneasy partnership continued until
the end of 1945. It ended after a series of terrorist attacks against
Police Headquarters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in which more
than ten people were killed. The collapse of their hopes that the
end of the war.and the victory of the Labour Party would bring a
change in Britain's Palestine policy made the Jewish leaders realize
that it was hopeless to fight terrorism as long as the underlying
cause was not removed. On December 30, 1945, Messrs. Ben
Gurion and Shertok informed the British High Commissioner that
any further efforts by the Jewish Agency to assist in preventing
such acts " would be futile *V

This implicit admission, three months after VJ-Day, that even
the cautious tacticians of the Jewish Agency had reached the end
of their tether, inaugurated a new phase in Palestine's history
which was to last to the end of the British Mandate. From now
on, the uneasy collaboration between Agency and Government was

1 The full text of the Jewish Agency's announcement to the Palestine Press
about its interview with the High Commissioner was as follows :

" It is learned that during the interview Mr. Ben Gurion and Mr. Shertok
declared that the Jewish Agency completely dissociated themselves from the
murderous attacks on Government and Army establishments perpetrated on
Thursday night. They expressed their profound sorrow at the loss of life
caused by the attacks. But, they stated, any effort by the Jewish Agency to
assist in preventing such acts would be rendered futile by the policy pursued
in Palestine by His Majesty's Government, on which the primary responsi-
bility rested for the tragic situation created in the country, and which had led
in recent weeks to bloodshed and innocent victims among Jews, Britons and
others. The Jewish Agency representatives added that it was difficult to
appeal to the Yishuv to observe the law at a time when the Mandatory
Government itself was consistently violating the fundamental law of the
country embodied in the Palestine Mandate " (Trevor, op. cit. p. 176).

H

98 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

replaced by an equally ambiguous underhand partnership between
Haganah and the terrorists.

None of these dealings have so far been disclosed and ex-
plained by official British or Jewish spokesmen. This reluctance
of the Jewish leaders to assume public responsibility for their
decisions during a critical period of Palestine history was to create
a chain of misunderstandings and an atmosphere of mistrust, both
inside the new State and in the outside world. It was the main
cause of that ambiguous twilight in which the birth of the new
State was shrouded, from the murder of Lord Moyne to that of
Count Bernadotte.

PART THREE

THE BIRTH-PANGS
(1945-1948)

CHAPTER IX

THE DISPLACED NATION

The victory of the Labour Party Great expectations
And shattered illusions Anatomy" of the D J\ A Labour
M.P. in the Jewish Hades " This nation must emigrate "

ON May 8, 1945, Germany capitulated. In July the General
Election brought the Labour Party into power, supported, for
the first time in its history, by an absolute majority in the House
of Commons. Not only was Fascism defeated, but Socialism had
triumphed in the still most powerful country of Western Europe.
The common people on the Continent, emerging from the night-
mare of six years of war, looked to Socialist Britain for hope and
guidance. They felt that a new era must open in Europe, and they
turned their expectant gaze towards red Downing Street from
where the new revelation must come.

In the series of bitter disappointments which befell, one by
one,* Greek Liberals and Spanish Republicans, German anti-
Fascists and Polish war veterans, and the progressive forces of
Europe in general in this funeral procession of shattered
illusions the Jews, to paraphrase a famous statement by Mr. Bevin,
took once more the head of the queue.

Of Europe's estimated pre-war Jewish population of seven
millions, only one survived. 1 Out of the surviving million, 300,000
were in Western Europe, with a fair chance of rebuilding a normal
life. The remaining 700,000 were driftwood, human debris float-
ing on the surface of the receding flood. One hundred thousand
of them lived in so-called Displaced Persons Camps.

A Displaced Person, commonly referred to as a DJP., is an
abstraction. To study this abstraction, and to " examine the
position of the Jews in those countries in Europe where they have
been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution, and the practical
measures taken or contemplated to be taken in those countries to

* Excluding the U.S.S.R.
101

102 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

enable them to live free from discrimination and oppression ",
was one of the tasks set to the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry appointed by the Governments of the United States and
the United Kingdom in December 1945.

The reality behind the abstraction, which the Committee
discovered in the course of its descent to the Hades of Central
and Eastern Europe, may best be conveyed by the following
extracts from the report of one of its members. 1

" During ten days, each of my colleagues [on the afore-
mentioned Committee] had smelled the unique and unforget-
table smell of huddled, homeless humanity. The abstract
arguments about Zionism and the Jewish State seemed curiously
remote after this experience of human degradation. A door had
slammed behind us ; now a nightmare, dimly apprehended in
reports and interviews and newspapers, had become our
everyday life, and everything else was a dream. Policies which
seemed sane enough in the White House or in Downing Street
struck these wretched people as sadistic brutality.

" What had we actually discovered ? First, that there were
about 98,000 men, women and children in the Assembly Centres
in Germany and Austria. Some of these centres were camps,
but many of them were blocks of houses or even good hotels
commandeered by the military authorities for the purpose.
Where they were surrounded by barbed wire, it was at the
wish of the inhabitants, who felt safer when they were divided
from the Germans by a fence. The living conditions of these
people and their food were far better than those of the Germans
or the Austrians. There was nothing to complain of here, and
for the most part they made no complaint on this score. When
they talked, as they did, of inhuman treatment, they meant
simply the inhumanity of keeping them where they were, in
the country of the people who had murdered 6,000,000 of their
kinsmen. When they refused to work, or left their quarters in
a filthy state, or even smashed the whole camp to pieces, it was
always for the same reason. They were afraid neurotically
afraid of being kept where they were. To tidy the room,
to put curtains in the windows, or to work, would be an act of
submission to the intolerable present by men whose only life
was a dream of the future. This they refused to do. A pathetic
but obstinate determination to survive made them assert that
each day in Germany must be lived as though it were the last
day, when food is eaten hurriedly, when bags are packed ready

1 R. H. S. Grossman, Palestine Mission, London, 1947.

THE DISPLACED NATION

103

for the journey out of the Land of Egypt and into the Promised
Land.

" These 98,000 people, most of them Polish Jews, had been
deported to a foreign country whose language most of them
could not speak. They had been rescued by our armies from
the gas chambers. If the war had gone on a few weeks or even
a few days longer, none of them would have been alive. Nearly
all of them were the isolated survivors of families which had been
wiped out. A large number, when the war ended, had walked
hundreds of miles back to their home towns to find themselves
the sole survivors of the Jewish community ; living ghosts
returned from the grave to reclaim property which had long
since been shared out. So they had trudged back to the
camps.

" Even if there had not been a single foreign Zionist or a
trace of Zionist propaganda in the camps, these people would
have opted for Palestine. Nine months had passed since VE
day, and their British and American liberators had made no
move to accept them in their own countries. For nine months,
huddled together, these Jews had had nothing to do but to
discuss the future. They knew that they were not wanted by
the western democracies, and they had heard Mr Attlee's plan
that they should help to rebuild their countries. 1 This sounded
to them pure hypocrisy. They were not Poles any more ; but,
as Hitler had taught them, members of the Jewish nation,
despised and rejected by * civilized Europe '. They knew that
far away in Palestine there was a national home willing and
eager to receive them and to give them a chance of rebuilding
their lives, not as aliens in a foreign state but as Hebrews in
their own country.

" Before I reached Vienna I had often asked myself whether
these people would still want to go to Palestine if America
opened its doors. I soon learned that this question was
academic. They knew and I knew that America was not pre-
pared to open its doors. Their one hope of escape from hell
was Palestine. If they were told that they might have to fight
the Arabs in Palestine, they replied not unreasonably that
they were willing to take the risk. Better to die fighting as
members of a Hebrew nation than to rot away month after
month in Assembly Centres in Germany, run by British and
Americans who talked of humanity but shut their doors to
human suffering.

1 In the House of Commons, as remote from the Jewish Hades as the
moon, the British Prime Minister had suggested that the D.P.s, instead of
going to Palestine, should collaborate in the rebuilding of Europe.

104 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" Talking to the camp leader [of a D.P. camp near Villach
on the Austro-Italian frontier], I learnt their history. These
were Jews who had returned to Poland from the gas chambers of
Auschwitz. Thence they walked in twos and threes southward
into Czechoslovakia and southwards again into Austria. The
grapevine those mysterious rumours by which Displaced
Persons get their news had told them that the way over the
Italian passes was still open and that from Italy they could get
a boat to Palestine. But by the time they got to Villach in their
twos and threes, the British Army had closed the frontier and
forbidden anyone to approach within five miles. They had been
shepherded by British soldiers into the disused prisoner of war
camp at the end of the town, and for seven months they had lain
in the camp looking at the frontier.

" They disliked our coming, and who would blame them ?
They regarded the British officials as prison warders. They
knew of Mr. Bevin's remark and they could not appreciate the
humour of being accused of * pushing to the head of the queue *
by a statesman who forbade them to go to Palestine and offered
them no other homeland. The camp policeman, elected by the
inmates, was a Polish boy of sixteen who had spent six years of
his life in concentration camps. His had been the survival of
the fittest, of the personality able to cajole, outwit, or bribe. I
asked him if he had relatives in America and he replied that his
mother was there. I asked him whether he wrote to her, and
his handsome face contorted with passion. * I have cut her off,
root and branch. She has betrayed the destiny of my nation.'
I asked him what he meant and he replied : * She has sold out
to the Goy. She has run away to America. It is the destiny
of my nation to be the lords of Palestine.* I asked him how he
knew this was the Jewish destiny and he replied : * It is written
in the Balfour Declaration.*

" It was useless to argue with that boy. He was the product
of his environment, of six years under the S.S, in concentration
camps and nine months under the British at Villach. For all I
know he is still there, lying in his bunk, gazing out at the
exquisite snow-mountains and the frontier just five miles away,
and still brooding on the fact that if he tries to cross it he will
be shot by a British soldier.

" Our discussions in Vienna drove us to one conclusion.
There was no possibility of sending these 98,000 people back to
their own countries, because they had no countries of their own.
Their roots had been torn up by the Nazis, and they could not
be replanted in their native soil. Nor was it possible to resettle
them in Germany or anywhere else in Europe.

THE DISPLACED NATION 105

" We had observed that morale was always highest in the
centres where a Kibbutz (a group community training itself for
the new life in Palestine) had been organized. The Kibbutzim
were a moving spectacle. In an environment of utter hopeless-
ness, the Zionist faith expressed itself in self-organization and
self-discipline. Their own civilization and communal life as
Jews had been destroyed. Their homes, their synagogues, their
libraries, everything had perished. But here in the camps a
new community was growing up in anticipation of the new life
in Palestine. To destroy the Kibbutz would be to break the only
values which prevented these people from degenerating, as
many in the concentration camps had degenerated, into sub-
human beastliness. But what country other than Palestine
would permit group movement and group settlement ? We
knew of none. And we were driven to the conclusion that if
these 98,000 human beings were to be saved, they must be
allowed to go where they wanted to go and where their needs
and neuroses would be understood.

" But speed, we all agreed, was essential. In the nine months
since VE day an appalling demoralization had set in which
could not be halted by good food or accommodation or educa-
tional facilities. Every month which passed, accelerated this
process of moral decay and of corrosive bitterness against
Britain and America. I remember calculating with an in-
genuous optimism that if our report were finished by the end
of April, the movement should have been completed bv Auerust
at latest. ..." *

The month of April to which the author refers is April 1946.
During the twenty-five months which passed between that date
and the termination of the British Mandate, the British Govern-
ment rejected all proposals for the transfer of the 98,000 to
Palestine.

After Austria, the Committee visited Poland, and heard wit-
nesses from Hungary and Rumania. As to the first country
mentioned

". . . on a rough calculation, about 300,000 Polish Jews out of
3,250,000 had survived the massacre. Just nine out of ten had
been killed. The vast majority of Polish Jews were determined
to emigrate. Poland had become a Jewish graveyard, and anti-
semitism was still strong despite the efforts of the Government
to combat it. Restitution of property, essential if the Jews were
to rebuild their lives, had not been put into practice and would
undoubtedly create a new wave of anti-Semitism if it were."

106 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The plight of the Jews of Rumania was described by one
witness to the Committee in these words :

" ' I would like to say a few words about the frame of mind of
the people who return from deportation. They return home and
they do not find the rest of the members of their family. It
is a very rare case if more than one member from each family
returns. They find their homes destroyed, their places of work
destroyed. Their first task is to search and investigate into
what happened to other members of their family. They under-
take long journeys when they hear that, in some far corner of the
country, someone may have some information about a member
of the family. Then, when after long investigations they find
that it is hopeless to investigate any further, a crisis enters their
lives. There are two courses they can take at this period. One
is that a great number of them commit suicide. I have no
official figures, but in my own home town there were fifteen
such people who committed suicide after liberation, as they had
no further purpose for living. The second course is to flee.
They do not want to remain in the place of the catastrophe. A
Jew can no longer remain in the city where he used to be happy
with the other members of his family, and where he can now
see, in the face of every man he looks upon, a possible murderer
of his family. In my opinion this is the deeper reason for the
great mass movement which we are experiencing all over Europe
to-day/

" ' All that is left,' he went on, ' is the diseased rump of
Eastern European Jewry. If this diseased rump is permitted to
fester and rot in Poland, Hungary and Rumania, it will infect
those countries with virulent anti-Semitism, Our civilization
and culture have been destroyed. The limbs of Jewry have been
torn off and its eyes pulled out. The only hope is to remove the
wretched survivors before they do any harm to themselves and
to their Gentile neighbours. It is of course possible for the
armies and the Governments to close the frontiers of eastern
Europe. But if that is to be the policy, we should be under no
illusion that it condemns three-quarters of a million survivors
of the Nazi persecution to immediate hopelessness and to a
lingering death. . . .'

" As a European I found it hard to accept the inevitable
conclusion. Could it really be true that, apart from the western
democracies where the Jewish communities had always been
insignificant, no single European country could be expected to
revive its Jewish community ? Could Hitler really have accom-
plished his aim ? "

THE DISPLACED NATION 107

A few months later, when the Committee's enquiry was com-
pleted, the author had found the answer to his question : "I
realize now that in this sense Hitler has won. He has created in
central and eastern Europe a Jewish nation without a home.
This nation must emigrate."

CHAPTER X

THE ROAD TO DISASTER

New factors on the post-war scene Labour's Palestine
pledges The struggle for the rescue of the 100,000
The impact of American opinion Haganah's conversion
to terrorism Bevin's first statement on Palestine
Appointment of the Anglo-American Committee.

The Committee's report The arguments for its
rejection The end of Balfour's vision

THUS, the first new factor which emerged at the end of the war
was the existence of a " displaced nation " a negative nation,
as it were, moulded not by organic growth but by outside pressure.
It was no longer a question of individuals wishing to emigrate for
individual reasons ; it was a modern repetition of the exodus
from Egypt.

The second new factor was that the Jews of Palestine emerged
from the war with a new national consciousness, a unity of purpose
overriding party conflicts and internal feuds ^ in other words,
with all the positive characteristics of a nation reborn.

These two halves of a race in fermentation strove towards each
other with the irresistible impulse of a chemical reaction, of an
electric current between opposite poles. No obstacles could
prevent its flow. When one channel was blocked, it found ten
others in its blind, groping, irresistible progress.

The third new factor affecting the Palestine problem was the
polarization of the globe into an Eastern and a Western half, with
Palestine, as usual, as one of the nodal points of the new field of
forces. Until the end of the war, British policy in the Middle
East was determined by considerations of preventing the Axis
from getting a hold over the Arabs. From the end of the war
onwards it was determined by similar considerations of pre-
venting Soviet Russia from getting a hold over them. The
guiding rule remained appeasement of the Arabs at any price ;
the only difference was that the Russian threat had been substi-

108

THE ROAD TO DISASTER log

tuted for the Nazi threat as a justification for continuing the White
Paper policy. It will be seen that Mr. Bevin's apparent realism
in handling the Palestine problem was in fact as irrational as
Mr. Chamberlain's attitude to Hitler or the Mufti. The main
difference was one of accent : while Mr. Chamberlain's uncon-
scious prejudices were of a somewhat pale and watery nature,
those of Mr. Bevin expressed themselves in a more dynamic and
virile manner.

The fourth new factor was the Labour victory itself that is,
the victory of a party more strongly and explicitly committed to
a pro-Zionist policy than any other. Support for the national
home had been incorporated into Labour's war aims as early as
1917, and reasserted during the following two decades, at success-
ive Party Conferences, on no less than eleven occasions. When
the Chamberlain Government issued the White Paper this was not
only condemned in the most violent terms by the Party, but it was
also made clear by the future Lord President that this policy would
not be binding upon any future Labour Government :

"... it ought to be known by the House that this breach of
faith which we regret, this breach of British honour, with its
policy with which we have no sympathy, is such that the least
that can be said is that the Government must not expect that
this is going to be automatically binding upon their suc-
cessor . . ." '

During the same debate Mr. Philip Noel-Baker, the future
Minister of State, uttered his prophetic warning :

" The Jews of Palestine will go by the tens of thousands
down to the beach to welcome and to cover and protect their
landing. The only way to stop them is to tell those kindly
British soldiers to shoot them down ... for that, if for no
other reason, this policy is bound to fail. ..."

One year later the Labour Party entered the Coalition Govern-
ment. It now had its full share of responsibility in the conduct of
the war, but its policy towards Palestine remained unchanged,
except in so far as the European massacre made the Party take
an even more radical line in favour of Zionism. In 1944 the
annual Labour Party Conference resolved :

1 Mr. Herbert Morrison, in the House of Commons Debate on the White
Paper, May 1939.

110 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" There is surely neither hope nor meaning in a * Jewish
National Home ' unless we are prepared to let the Jews, if they
wish, enter this tiny land in such numbers as to become a
majority. There was a strong case for this before the war.
There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities
of the cold and calculated German Nazi plan to kill all Jews in
Europe."

Again a year later, in 1945, a few weeks before the Labour Party
came into power, the later Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dr. Hugh
Dalton, stated :

" It is morally wrong and politically indefensible to impose
obstacles to the entry into Palestine now of any Jews who desire
to go there. We consider Jewish immigration into Palestine
should be permitted without the present limitations which
obstruct it. . . ."

Breaches of electoral promises are no novelty in politics. But
these were not electoral promises in the usual sense ; they were
expressions of a policy which the Party had consistently advocated
for a quarter-century. The Jewish electorate is from the Labour
point of view insignificant, and considerations which make the
Zionist issue an important one in American presidential elections
do not arise in England. Nor does the classic argument that it is
easy to take an idealistic line for a Party as long as it is in opposi-
tion, but difficult to implement it when in power, apply in this
case. The Party did not step into power straight from the
Opposition, but had been sharing the power and responsibility
of the Coalition Government for five years. During these five
years, while it reasserted its maximalist support for the Zionist
case, its leaders in the Cabinet had access to all reports, official
and secret, concerning Palestine, and both the opportunity and the
duty to familiarize themselves with all aspects of the problem.
When their position changed from shared to exclusive responsi-
bility, they could not claim ignorance as an excuse for their sudden
and complete reversal of policy.

Germany had capitulated on May 8, 1945. On June 18 the
Jewish Agency applied to the Palestine Government for the allo-
cation of 100,000 immigration permits " in order to meet the most

THE ROAD TO DISASTER IU

urgent claims and in view of the untenable position of the sur-
viving Jews of Europe ". Thus started the long and bitter
struggle for the " Rescue of the 100,000 " on which gradually
the whole Palestine question came to focus.

The Agency's application remained without effect. In July the
new Government came into office. The King's speech at the
opening of the new Parliament kept silence about Palestine. So
did, for almost six months, the Government, whose members had,
immediately before the elections, so urgently pressed for the
abolition of all immigration restrictions.

In September the President of the United States received a
report from Mr. Earl Harrison about the plight of the Jewish
D.P.s, and wrote a letter to the British Prime Minister, urging on
him the immediate admission of the 100,000 into Palestine. The
President's letter, according to a later State Department com-
munique, remained unanswered.

At about the same time a campaign started in the British Press
which centred round two main points : firstly, that the admission
of Jewish D.P.s into Palestine would" set the Middle East aflame " ;
and, secondly, that if the Americans made proposals for a British
policy in Palestine, they should be prepared " to take their share
of responsibility in carrying them out ".

Both arguments were officially inspired, and were to be repeated
for years to come by the Government's spokesmen. They sounded
plausible enough to the British taxpayer, who did not remember
that the bogey of " setting the Middle East aflame " had already
been used by Mr. Chamberlain in 1939, and did not know that to
prevent immigration into Palestine would be a policy much more
costly in terms of manpower, casualties and loss of British prestige
than to permit it. The Government, on the other hand, knew these
facts from its military advisers on the spot ; the reasons which
prompted it to adopt a policy which members of the Cabinet
had described only a few weeks before as " morally wrong and
politically indefensible " will be discussed later.

The first consequence of the Government's repudiation of its
pledge to allow Displaced Jews into Palestine was to incense
American public opinion and to endanger the granting of the
urgently needed American loan. At a mass rally, before an
audience of 45,000, New York's Mayor La Guardia advised the
British Ambassador, Lord Halifax, that " if Britain wants credit,
the best way to get it is the indication that the borrower knows

112 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

how to keep his word ". The fate of the 100,000 began to act on
world opinion like a pebble thrown into a pond. Its ripples soon
grew into waves which threatened to drown Britain's prestige and
economic future. The British Press asserted that the whole storm
was artificially stirred up by Zionist propaganda. This certainly
played an important part, but it was merely that of the lock-gate
which opens the sluice. And behind the dam were Dachau and
Belsen, of which the first authentic pictures and reports were
flooding into the world's conscience.

On September 24 Dr. Weizmann disclosed that instead of
100,000, the Colonial Office had offered him 1500 immigration
certificates, with the comment that " they were the last available
under the White Paper ". Indignation and tension rose both in
Palestine and on the political front in the U.S.A., whose five and
a half million Jews now constituted the bulk of what survived of
the Jewish race outside Russia. In Palestine a procession of
60,000 people was headed by survivors from Belsen and Buchen-
wald in striped convict pyjamas. In America reactionary isola-
tionists and Communist sympathisers gloated in unison over
" Albion's latest perfidy 'V

At the same time Haganah and the Jewish Agency underwent
a gradual and reluctant conversion to terrorism. During the first
days of October it became known that the Government intended
to deport some forty oriental Jews to their countries of origin,
Iraq and Syria. As anti-Semitism was rapidly growing in the
Arab countries, the fate which awaited these people was prison
or worse. They were detained, together with another 170 illegal
immigrants from different countries, in the Athlit detention camp.
On October 10 armed Haganah men descended on the camp,
overpowered the garrison, and freed the inmates ; in the course
of the action one British constable was killed. It was the first
time an Englishman had fallen victim to Haganah since the begin-
ning of the Mandate, and the first act of armed revolt on Haganah's
part.

Hitherto the Jewish Agency had restricted the activities of its
militia to the defence of settlements, the smuggling in of immi-
grants, and the fight against the terrorist groups. Now a decisive

1 It is of some historic interest to note that during this critical period of
Anglo-American relations, when the Palestine issue assumed suddenly a mass-
psychological weight capable of tilting the scales one way or the other, the
American Zionists at the last minute decided, in the interest of Western solidar-
ity, to vote for the loan.

THE ROAD TO DISASTER 113

change of political strategy took place. The Agency leaders and
the Hebrew Press began to refer to Haganah as the "Jewish
Resistance Movement". Though everybody concerned knew
that this was merely a new name for Haganah, the leaders stuck
to the tenuous fiction that the Jewish Agency and the Jewish
Resistance Movement were two independent bodies.

Ten days after the Athlit coup Haganah staged its first country-
wide sabotage action. On the night of October 31, 1945, the
railway system all over Palestine was paralysed by the simul-
taneous blowing up of bridges and junctions in over a hundred
places. At the same hour police patrol ships exploded in the
ports of Jaffa and Haifa, arid bombs went off in the Haifa oil
refineries. The number of victims six killed was relatively
small ; but none of the casuistry used in the official statements
of the Jewish leaders could alter the fact that Haganah had em-
barked on an underground warfare whose methods were hardly
distinguishable from those of Irgun.

A fortnight later, on November 13, came Mr. Bevin's first
official statement on Palestine, followed on the same day by a
Press conference. The essential point of the statement was the
appointment of an Anglo-American Committee to make recom-
mendations for the future of Palestine. This was exactly the
eighteenth fact-finding committee appointed by His Majesty's
Government ; and as the Labour Party was committed to abolish-
ing the immigration bar, the embittered Jews of Palestine suspected
that the only purpose in appointing the Committee was delay and
prevarication ; a suspicion which subsequent events proved
correct. The tone and manner of the statement appeared to the
Jews insulting ; they particularly resented Mr. Bevin's fatal crack
that they should not " push to the head of the queue ". But worst
of all was the refusal to admit the 100,000 D.P.s, and their implicit
condemnation to remain indefinitely in the camps. Even the
continuation of the dismal trickle of 1500 immigrants a month
was made dependent by the Foreign Secretary on the " generosity
of our Arab friends " as if to drive home to all concerned that
the Jews were in Palestine not by right, but on sufferance. The
statement was a catastrophe for the Jews ; under its shattering
effect it remained almost unnoticed that the continuation of the
monthly quota of 1500, however conditional, meant nevertheless
a symbolic breach of the White Paper. This was, however, hardly
more than an alibi for the Government against the accusation

114 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

that it was continuing Mr. Chamberlain's policy.

On the day following Mr. Bevin's statement, the Jewish
National Council called a protest strike, and the Chief Rabbinate
a Day of Prayer and Fasting, marked by the blowing of the ram's
horn in the synagogues. There were violent outbreaks all over
Palestine, with 9 Jews killed, 37 British soldiers hurt, and a number
of Government offices demolished. The Government retaliated
by deploying some 15,000 troops of the 6th Airborne Division, the
Brigade of Guards and other units, to carry out arms searches in
three settlements in the plain of Sharon and in Samaria, in the
course of which 8 settlers were killed. The Jews in their turn hit
back by blowing up Police headquarters and electric power
stations all over the country.

The year which had brought peace to the world ended with
the first encounters in the sub-war between the British Foreign
Office and the future State of Israel.

" The Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry regarding the
Problems of European Jewry and Palestine " was, as already
mentioned, the eighteenth committee to study Palestine, but the
first in which the problem of European Jewry was linked to that
of Palestine. Such was the feeling of urgency in American public
opinion about the fate of the D.P.s, that the Committee was re-
quested to complete and furnish its report within 120 days from
the inception of its enquiry. It actually did so in less. At an
official luncheon in London, given in honour of the Committee,
Mr. Bevin pledged his word that if its report were unanimous he
would do everything in his power to implement it. The report
was unanimous, and was never implemented.

The Commission's Report was published on April 20, 1947.
It was divided into short-term and long-term recommendations.
The main points of the former were the recommendation that
100,000 immigration permits be immediately granted to displaced
Jews and that the land sale regulations of 1940 be rescinded.
These two recommendations for immediate action meant in fact
the abrogation of the White Paper of 1939. The long-term
recommendations were : extension of the British Mandate under
United Nations Trusteeship with the gradual development of
self-governing institutions, and the temporary continuation of

THE ROAD TO DISASTER 115

Jewish immigration according to Article 6 of the Mandate, pending
the new trusteeship agreement under U.N.O. In fact the long-
term recommendations of the Committee left the door open to
any kind of ultimate solution ; it explicitly rejected the conversion
of Palestine into a Jewish State, and did not even mention partition.

The first official reaction came from President Truman who,
immediately after the publication of the Report, made an en-
thusiastic but, in view of British susceptibilities, rather tactless
statement. It endorsed the Committee's short-term recommenda-
tions, and rubbed salt into Foreign Office chilblains by gleefully
pointing out that the Committee had " recommended in fact the
abrogation of the White Paper of 1939 ". About the long-term
recommendations the President was rather vague ; about Ameri-
can cooperation in implementing the Committee's report he
was silent.

This gave the British Government an excellent pretext for
torpedoing the whole Report. On May 2 and on June 12 the Prime
Minister and the Foreign Secretary, the former in the House of
Commons, the latter at the Party Conference in Bournemouth,
gave a number of reasons for the Government's refusal to imple-
ment the recommendations of the Committee which it had
appointed. Mr. Attlee declared that it " would not be possible
for the Government of Palestine to admit so large a body of
immigrants" without American help, and, furthermore, made
the admission of the D.P.s dependent on the condition that the
" illegal armies in Palestine " (meaning the Haganah) be " dis-
banded and their arms surrendered ".

This, again, sounded reasonable and fair to the uninformed
public. The fact is, as the Government's critics pointed out in
the debate, that to disarm Haganah without simultaneously dis-
banding the armies of the Arab League would have been neither
fair nor reasonable. To accept a one-sidd disarmament while
the League was openly threatening the Jews with extermination
would clearly have been suicide for the latter and this the
British Government knew as well as the Jews did. But the fact
that Haganah was an " illegal " army, while the armies of Egypt,
Syria, Iraq and Transjordan, who two years later were to invade
Palestine, enjoyed international respectability of a sort, enabled
the British Prime Minister, on this as on later occasions, to make
an absurdity sound pkusible. As members of the Anglo-
American Committee subsequently disclosed, the proposal to

Il6 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

make the disarmament of Haganah a condition for the admittance
of the 100,000 had been discussed and rejected by it as a logical
and moral impossibility. In other words, the Prime Minister
made acceptance of the Committee's report dependent on a
condition which the Committee itself had rejected.

The Prime Minister's arguments for refusing to admit the
100,000 were complemented and rounded off by the Foreign
Secretary's statement at the Party Conference one month later,
It was the first Conference since the Party's ascent to power. At
the previous Conference the delegates had cheered the resolve
that " immigration into Palestine should be permitted without the
present limitations which obstruct it ". Now they cheered with
equal gusto when Mr. Bevin told them that the D.P.s' transfer
and resettlement would cost the British taxpayer two hundred
million pounds ; that in order to get them into Palestine he would
need "to put in another division of troops there, which he was
not prepared to do " ; and that the reason why the Americans
were so keen on dumping Jews into Palestine was that they did
not want " to have too many of them in New York ".

The Foreign Secretary's first argument, about the two hundred
million pounds, was flatly untrue. From the beginning to the
end of the British Mandate the transport and resettlement of
immigrants was exclusively paid for out of Zionist funds and never
cost the British taxpayer a penny. Later on Mr. Bevin was forced
to admit his error which, whatever its causes, had the effect of
giving the British public the impression that it had to pay fantastic
sums to get Jews into Palestine who, once there, immediately
started shooting at their benefactors.

As for the additional division to protect the immigrants, the
Jews in Palestine, far from needing British protection, were in a
position to take the country over whenever the British withdrew.
This was not only proved by events two years later, but (as will
be seen in the next chapter), was already known to the British
Government at the time when the Foreign Secretary made his
statement. The fact is that no division, company or platoon was
needed to let the D.P.s in ; but no less than five divisions, in
addition to units of the Royal Navy and Air Force, were subse-
quently needed to enforce a policy of keeping thefri out. After
Mr, Bevin's Bournemouth speech it became clear, not only that
it was the latter policy which the Government had decided to carry
out, but also that it had decided to go " all out " against Haganah

THE ROAD TO DISASTER IIJ

and the Jewish Agency, and to liquidate the Zionist adventure once
and for all. The proof came a fortnight later, when, on June 29,
1946, the Government arrested 3000 Jews in key-positions and
embarked on wholesale military operations against Jewish settle-
ments.

From here onward the road led straight to disaster to the
undoing of half a century of patient British achievements in
the Middle East and the drowning of Balfour's great vision in
the blood and squalor of a second Ireland in the Levant. Before
we turn to the depressing story of the last two years of the British
Mandate we must try to analyse the reasons which prompted the
Labour Government to adopt a policy which stood in glaring
contradiction to the Party's principles and pledges, and led to
a series of political defeats, all of which had been predicted as
inevitable consequences of such a policy, by members of the
Government itself.*

CHAPTER XI

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS

The Sphinx without a secret The vicious circle of
bureaucracy A Foreign Office plan for the Middle East
The re-education of British public opinion The
machiavellian fallacy.

The shift in the Palestine balance of power Zionist
Bolsheviks and Jewish Fascists The oil controversy
The intrusion of the archetype

UNLIKE in detective stories and in the diabolic interpretation of
history, the safest guess for the solution of a political puzzle is
always the most trivial one. Most of the episodes in English
.history which puzzled the world from Queen Elizabeth's day to
British policy between the two World Wars can be reduced to a
homely mixture of inertia, departmental muddle and bureaucratic
routine. His Majesty's Governments and Ambassadors have at
all times played the part of Wilde's Sphinx without a Secret.

Thus the first answer, though not a complete one, to the
question why the Labour Party's Palestine policy changed into its
exact opposite in the short period between the General Election
in July and Mr. Bevin's statement in November, is that the
Government had changed, but the Foreign Office and the Arab
experts had not.

The layman's idea of the purpose of a Committee of Enquiry
is that it should enquire into the suitability or otherwise of the
policy pursued by those responsible for administering the territory
in question. But the. layman's idea does not necessarily coincide
with departmental routine. The Anglo-American Committee's
report was not judged by the members of the Cabinet on its
merits, but in the light of the comments of the Civil Servants and
departmental heads to whom it was previously submitted. These
comments, according to the testimony of a British member of the
Committee, amounted to " a concise summary of the case against
the report "- 1 It could not be otherwise, since these were the men
1 Grossman, op. tit.

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS

responsible " for administering the territory in question ", and it
was only logical that they should do all in their power to demolish
a report whose conclusions amounted to a demolition of their
policy. Thus the Anglo-American Committee's report in 1946
shared the fate of the Royal Commission's Report in 1937. " We
had sat in judgment weighing all the conflicting views, including
that of the British officials. Now, at the moment of decision, the
officials gave judgment on our judgment." l

This vicious circle, bewildering as it appears to the common
sense of the average citizen, was by no means an exceptional
consequence of the Palestine tangle. The appointment of a
Commission of Enquiry into some disturbing problem always
sounds reassuring to the democratic citizen, and in as many cases
as not this reassuring effect is all that it produces, particularly
if the object of the enquiry is colonial or prison administration.
If its conclusions whitewash the Government, or do not go beyond
the proposal of some mild palliatives, all the better, and they may
even have a chance of being implemented. If the conclusions are
disturbing, the report can be shelved " for further consideration ".
The channels through which it passes are often identical with
those whose workings it criticizes or tends to reform. In short,
such committees are frequently what harsh critics of the regime
call " democratic eyewash ". To become efficient instruments of
democracy, it would be necessary that an undertaking by the
Government which appoints them should be included in their
terms of reference ; or otherwise that final judgment should rest
with a body separate from the executive power.

It is not pure chance that Palestine has been the object of
enquiries and recommendations by more commissions and com-
mittees than any other British imperial Jieadache, and that their
recommendations never resulted in a constructive policy. For
Palestine was, as we emphasized in the first chapter, an unorthodox
affair, a freak phenomenon, and, for this reason if for no other,
the pet aversion of permanent officials and heads of department.
It was at the same time a test for the ratio of imagination to routine
in every Government which had been called to cope with it. It
was finally a test for the capacity of a Government to adapt itself
to a rapidly changing situation for in no other country had the
balance of power been so startlingly reversed in so short a time
as through the transformation of Haganah from the meek home

1 Ibid.

120 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

guard of a precarious minority to the weightiest military factor in
the Middle East. It is on this last test that the Labour Govern-
ment fell down most heavily. A powerful minority in the Cabinet
had formed, with the help of the permanent officials and of their
personal bias, a definite opinion as to what should be done in
Palestine in the interest of all concerned ; and no Anglo-American
or United Nations Committee, neither independent advice nor
the plain language of facts, could deter them from their fixed
course.

The Anglo-American Committee was a truly independent body
of men, half American, half British, of various professions and
parties. The majority of its British members was definitely not
in sympathy with the political aspirations of Zionism. Yet their
conclusions, based on a thorough and independent survey of facts,
stood at right angles to the course of British policy like those
of their predecessor, the Royal Commission, and their successor,
the U.N.O. Fact-Finding Commission. In consequence, all of
them had to be ignored.

" This [the Anglo-American Committee's] assessment of the
situation was in flat contradiction to that of the permanent officials.
. . . That, I am sure, is why Mr. Bevin, despite urgent requests,
could find no time to see Sir Frederick Leggett [H.M.G.'s repre-
sentative at the International Labour Office and a close collaborator
of Mr. Bevin] and myself at any time during the whole summer.
To see us would be waste of time, unless the Foreign Secretary
were prepared to take seriously our assessment of the situation.
That meant reviewing afresh his whole Middle Eastern policy." I

And this Mr. Bevin was not prepared to do at any price, and
whatever arguments spoke for it. The very fact that the Foreign
Secretary refused even to talk to members of a committee ap-
pointed by his own Government, and whose recommendations
he had pledged himself to implement, is proof of the unalterable
course he had set himself.

What was that course ? The same which the permanent
officials and Arab experts had urged upon all Governments for
the last twenty years, the same which had decided Mr. Chamber-
lain to issue the White Paper and the Palestine Administration to
close the gates of Palestine to Jews in the hour of their need : to
remove the stumbling-block of Anglo-Arab understanding, the
nigger in the Levantine woodpile, from the political scene not

1 Grossman, op. cit.

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS 121

by doing the Palestine Jews any harm, but merely by curbing their
political aspirations towards autonomous statehood. For this
purpose their numerical increase by immigration and their
strategical expansion by the acquisition of more land had to be
prevented. Instead, they were to have a guaranteed minority
status in an independent Palestine Arab State linked to Great
Britain by a pact of friendship and mutual assistance, in exchange
for British military equipment and perhaps a financial subsidy
as in the case of Transjordan and Iraq. Thus peace would come
to the Middle East and the Arab States could be turned into a
reliable bulwark against German or Soviet expansion, as the case
may be, with British airfields dotted over the map, and Arab oil
peacefully flowing across the deserts. The Jews themselves would
be much better off under this arrangement, for once the Arabs
ceased to fear their domination and were generally appeased, they
would no longer be hostile to the Jews, with their " guaranteed
minority status ".*

To put this programme into effect, two obstacles had to be
overcome. Firstly, the Jews in Palestine, thanks to British leniency,
had grown too strong and presumptuous. To clear the way for
an all-round settlement on the proposed lines they had to be
taken down a peg. The necessary measures for doing this were
contained in a plan which had been submitted to the National
Coalition Government by Sir Harold MacMichael, High Com-
missioner of the Struma period, and since elaborated in detail by
the various service departments concerned. It comprised the
forcible disarmament of Haganah, the breaking of the various
monopolies and economic key positions of the Jewish trade unions,
the smashing up of the Jewish State within the State, the dissolu-
tion of the Jewish Agency and, if necessary, the arrest of the
Jewish leaders. This plan was tentatively put into operation on
June 29, 1946 ; its consequences will be seen in the next chapter.

The second difficulty was the existence of certain idealistic
pledges passed at Party Conferences, and the equally unrealistic
statements in the past of the Party's leading members who were
now in the Government. This could only be overcome by patient

1 This pet formula of officialese never lost its pleasing sound, despite the
experiences of the Armenian, Greek, Syriac, Kurdish, Maronite, Hindu, Moslem,
Sikh and other national or religious minorities in the East not to mention
those of Europe. [Translated from the language of officialdom into that of
historic fact, a " guaranteed minority status " is equivalent to that of a
** licensed persecutee ".

122 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

prevarication, by the appointment of Committees of Enquiry, the
Consultation of Experts, and other approved means of playing for
time, until public opinion and the attitude of the Party came
gradually round to a more realistic attitude, re-educated by
reasoned speeches from the Government, the eloquence of the
Press, and the benevolent despotism of the Party Whip.

All this sounds extremely machiavellian. The only snag in
the whole conception was that it was utterly divorced from reality.
It was in fact a pseudo-machiavellian cloud-cuckoo policy. But
the puritan British mind always feels sinfully flattered when,
instead of inconsistency and muddle, cynical ruthlessness and
machiavellian cunning are imputed to it. It is precisely this lack
of ruthlessness and imagination which makes the British politician
behave in such a way that, if he cannot be taken for a philanthropist
he should at least be taken for a sinister Grey Eminence. The secret
of the sphinx, made impenetrable by conscious cant and uncon-
scious mannerisms, is its mediocrity. Mr. Chamberlain was not
a machiavellian but a business man from Birmingham. Mr. Bevin
is not a machiavellian but a trade union boss who regards the world
as a slightly enlarged Transport House. They are not Renaissance
princes, but somewhat flat-footed pseudo-machiavellian burghers.

There are circumstances in history when the leaders of a nation
'or political movement feel compelled to sacrifice morality to
expediency. What possible reasons of expediency may have
compelled the Labour Cabinet to adopt a policy which was bound
to expose them to the same charge of a " cynical breach of
pledges " which they themselves had brought against the Chamber-
lain Government a few years before ?

One of the fundamental rules of expediency is to " back the
winning horse ", or to " play the strongest card ", among those
available, against the main enemy. This principle induced the
Chamberlain Government, in its struggle against the main enemy,
Germany, to appease the Arabs and sacrifice the Jews. The same
principle has been invoked to justify the Labour Government's
siding with the Arabs against the Jews in its efforts to stem Russian
expansion. But if in 1939 Mr. Chamberlain may have had some
excuse for falling victim to the myth of Arab might and power
created by the Middle East experts, Mr. Bevin in 1945 had no

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS 123

excuse for believing the Arabs to be the stronger party, or a
bulwark of any strategic value against the Russians. The most
authoritative view on this subject was probably that of the British
G.O.C. Palestine. In March 1946 this post was held by General
J. C. D'Arcy. He stated his views on the relative strength of Jews
and Arabs to members of the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry as follows :

" i. Speaking purely from the military point of view, he
could enforce a pro- Jewish solution without much difficulty.

" 2. In enforcing such a solution, the Haganah could be most
helpful.

"3. In the event of a pro- Arab solution, he would have to
contend with a " highly efficient " military organization (the
Haganah). He would require three army divisions and from
four to six months to break the back of the opposition. Even
then, some measure of underground resistance ,would persist.

"4. In enforcing a pro-Arab solution, Arab support, he was
afraid, would be of no value.

" We discussed with him what would happen if British troops
were withdrawn from Palestine.

" * If you were to withdrew British troops, the Haganah
would take over all Palestine to-morrow/ General D'Arcy
replied flatly.

" * But could the Haganah hold Palestine in such circum-
stances ? ' I asked.

" * Certainly/ he said. ' They could hold it against the
entire Arab world.' " l

The last High Commissioner of Palestine, General Sir Alan
Cunningham, expressed a similar opinion. Speaking of Haganah,
he said to members of the Committee : " My own feeling in the
matter is, that it really cannot be destroyed even if the Govern-
ment should wish to do so." 2 The cumulative effect of the public
and secret information gathered by the Committee in the course
of their investigations is summed up by Grossman as follows :

" An Arab expert in Cairo told me that the Haganah was the
most powerful military force in the Middle East, apart from
the British Army, and has completely transformed the balance
of power. He added that if we withdrew from Palestine the
Haganah would overrun the country and hold it for some years

1 Hartley C. Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, London, 1047. Mr. Crum
was an American member of the Committee. z Ibid,

124 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

at least. No one here in Jerusalem challenges that view. Even
those who dislike the Jews most pay tribute to their military
efficiency. " l

The fact that without British intervention on either side the
Jews were in a position to impose their own solution must there-
fore have been known to the British Cabinet. In terms of pure
expediency, the Jews being militarily the stronger party, there was
no apparent logical justification for Labour's refusal to implement
their pledge to them.

It may be argued against this that the Jews, though physically
stronger, were less reliable as an ally against Russian expansion
than the Arabs. Strange as it seems to-day, similar arguments
had already been used in Mr. Chamberlain's days to prove that
the Jews of Palestine, many of whom were of German origin and
imbued with German culture, would be less reliable in the fight
against Nazism than the Grand Mufti and the Arab effendis. It is
a characteristic of the conscious or unconscious anti-Semite that
he always assumes the Jew to be on the side of his enemies. For
Hitler all Jews were agents of Bolshevism and of the pluto-
democracies. For the French and English anti-Semite, all German
war refugees were Nazi agents. The Palestine Government's
policy was, as we have seen, supported by the same argument.
With the advent of Mr. Bevin at the Foreign Office, the D.P.s
automatically transformed themselves from Nazi agents into
Bolshevik agents. 2 The fact that the Nazis killed Jews did not
affect the war-time distrust of Jewish refugees. The fact that for
thirty years, from 1917 to 1947, the Soviets persecuted Zionism
as a Fascist Movement and imperialist tool with arctic deporta-
tion camps as an equivalent for the gas chambers was equally
unable to dispel the suspicion that they were a Russian fifth
column in the Middle East. 3

1 Grossman, op. cit.

2 It should be noted that Soviet and Comintern policy remained violently
hostile to Zionism until two years after the period under review. It changed
abruptly in October 1947, for reasons to be referred to later.

3 Cf. Grossman, op. cit. : "I dined with a group of middle-grade British
officials and their wives. Two of them spent the evening trying to convince me
that the Jewish Labour movement here is Bolshevik and can't be trusted.
Actually, the Labour movement here, from what I've seen of it, is fanatically
anti-Bolshevik, and as good a potential ally of the British Labour movement as
were the Vienna Socialists. But nothing I said did any good at the dinner.
These people ' knew V

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS I2j

The same half-conscious bias worked in the opposite directioi
when it came to the assessment of Arab reliability against Germanj
or Russia. Since the First World War, when Turkish rule was
replaced by Anglo-French domination in the Levant States, Arat
policy, however confused, has remained self-consistent on one
basic issue : the natural tendency to play one European powei
against the other. During each of the Syrian rebellions against
the French, British arms from Palestine found their way as mys-
teriously into the rebels' hands as French arms did during the
anti-British revolts in Palestine. Italian and German arms and
funds were accepted with equal readiness when Anglo-French
domination seemed to be on the decline :

" Whatever the Arab politicians might say to the British
diplomatists, there was no reason to believe that the Arab
attitude would be any more favourable in a third world war
than in the second. Every Arab State, since British power has
sharply declined, would be bound in the event of war to avoid
siding actively with us. ... I asked Jemal [Jemal Effendi el
Husseini, one of the Palestine Arab leaders] a series of questions
on his attitude to the Mufti and the Arab attitude to the war.
He answered with calculated candour, explaining why an Arab
patriot could not help being indifferent and expressing his
conviction that the Mufti had always acted in the interests of
his people, and that when he was in Germany that is just what
he was doing. After today's evidence, anybody who thinks that
the Arab leaders are not prepared to accept any sort of help in
order to get rid of the British is" just refusing to face facts." l

If British estimates of the respective value of Arabs and Jews
as a potential ally against Russia were to be taken at face value and
not as what they are, rationalizations of an emotional prejudice,
then the controversy about Zionism would have become as
" polarized " between pro- and anti-Russians as, say, the contro-
versy about Poland, or about Mihailovitch and Tito. In other
words, the fellow-travellers would all have been pro-Zionist as
they actually did become overnight in November 1947, when
Russia changed her line about Palestine. The fact is that the
alignment in the Arab-Jewish issue was determined primarily by
irrational motives, and cut across the two camps. If a person is
emotionally for the Arab and against the Jew, he will rationalize
his attitude with equal ease whether he is pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet.

1 Grossman, op. cit.

PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

If he is anti-Soviet, he will explain that the Jews cannot be trusted
because they are Bolsheviks. If he is pro-Soviet, he will explain
that the Zionists cannot be trusted because they are Jewish Fascists.
In both cases the rationalization of the bias will be entirely sincere.
The last rationalization of the pseudo-machiavellian is usually
a somewhat shamefaced reference to the fact that while, there may
be some philanthropic arguments in favour of the Jews, the over-
riding argument in favour of the Arabs are the oilfields in the
Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In fact, this argument cuts both ways,
just like the previous one. King Ibn Saud's budget is almost
entirely derived from British subsidies and American oil royalties.
The Iraqi Government is in a similar position. Soviet roubles
cannot compete in attraction with dollars and pounds ; and both
countries being under the direct menace of the proximity of the
Soviet frontiers, know only too well that to do business with, and
receive subsidies from, the Western democracies is one thing, to
come under Communist rule another. The Arab oil countries are
as dependent on Western financial support as the Western Powers
are on the Middle Eastern oil ; loss of the oil royalties would mean
immediate bankruptcy for both Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and no
Arab Government, is willing to commit suicide for the sake of a
cause which does not affect its interests except in a remote and
sentimental manner. No patriotic sentiments were able to prevent
the Arab ruling class in Palestine itself from continuing to sell its
land piecemeal to the Jews ; it was fantastic to believe that Ibn
Saud or the Iraqi Government would face bankruptcy and revolt
in their own countries to prevent 'a compromise solution in
Palestine provided they knew that the Western Powers were
determined to carry it through.

Against the belief of the ". diabolicians ", Britain did not
sacrifice the Jews to her oil interests. The opposite is true : oil
interests served as a pretext for her sincere wish to liquidate her
Zionist commitments. It was the British Government which went
out of its way to bring the oil-possessing Arab States into the
Palestine dispute by inviting them to the Round-Table Conference
in 1939, and by uniting them a few years later in the Arab League
a cardboard monster which turned out to be as anti-British as it
was anti-Zionist. The aim of this policy, grown out of the roots
of the Arab myth, of the wish-dreams of the Cairo officials, was,
as far as it can be summed up in concise terms, not that Arabs
should fight or massacre Jews, but rather that the Arabs should

THE PSEUDO-MACHIAVELLIANS 127

be put into a position from which they could blackmail Britain
into an anti-Zionist policy. The Foreign Office experts wanted
to see the Arabs strong so as to be able to justify, before their own
conscience and in the eyes of the world, the abandonment of the
Zionist experiment as a hopeless and doomed cause. They be-
lieved in Arab strength, and tried to bolster it up to justify their
belief. They wanted to be bullied and blackmailed out of their
commitments to the Jews, and they created the instrument for
Arab bullying and blackmail. It was not a diabolic but a pseudo-
machiavellian policy, concocted from emotional prejudice and stale
Foreign Office recipes.

To sum up : the abrupt change of Labour policy towards
Palestine after the war -was not a case of sacrificing principle to
circumstance or morality to expediency. All arguments of ex-
pediency were refuted by subsequent events which were the
outcome of a situation of which the Government had full know-
ledge. Expediency was not a prime mover of this policy but its
excuse and rationalization post factum. Its prime mover was,
apart from the factors already discussed, an irrational bias of
archetypal power which found its most remarkable expression in
the person of the Foreign Secretary.

CHAPTER XII

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND

Mr. Bevin's i8th Brumaire The Master Plan leaks out
Arrest of the Jewish Agency leaders Operations
against the settlements Passive resistance The anti-
climax.

Anxious improvisations Morrison Plan and Bevin
Plan Palestine referred to U.N.O.

The lowest common denominator Terror and hypo-
crisy The deportation orders The blowing-up of the
King David Hotel Haganah and Irgun

MENTION has been made in the previous chapter of the British
plan, first proposed by Sir Harold MacMichael, to break up once
and for all the Jewish State within the State by disarming
Haganah, dissolving the Jewish Agency, mass arrests and similar
draconic measures.

As things go in Palestine, a sufficient number of documents
were intercepted by Haganah Intelligence to keep the Jewish
leadership posted in some detail on the decisive blow planned
against them ; a collection of photostatic copies still lies in the
State Archives of Israel awaiting publication. It is significant,
however, that a number of prominent Service chiefs, among them
the last two High Commissioners, Lord Gort and Sir Alan
Cunningham, were opposed to the whole scheme, as they realized
that it could not be successfully completed without aerial bombard-
ments of Jewish towns and settlements to break the people's
resistance. Two remarks made by Sir Alan and General D'Arcy
to the Anglo-American Committee are significant in this context.
At an official reception in Jerusalem one of the British members of
the Committee asked the G.O.C., Palestine :

" * Are you implying, Sir, that it is impossible for His
Majesty's Government to disarm the Haganah ? ' General
D'Arcy replied : ' You cannot disarm a whole people. I rather

128

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND I2Q

think the world will not stand for another mass murder of
Jews.' " i

Sir Alan Cunningham was even more explicit :

" No, I shouldn't want to see the Agency disbanded. I am
not one of those who underestimate it. The Palestine Govern-
ment may not like it, but it cannot ignore it : it is a force to be
reckoned with, and my own feeling in the matter is that it really
cannot be destroyed even if the Government should wish to
do so." 2

A number of similar statements could be quoted to demonstrate
the division of opinions which prevailed in the top-level strata
during the decisive months before the zgth of June 1946. It was
not so much a disagreement on the policy to be pursued as a
widespread reluctance to face the consequences of its implemen-
tation. This led to a typical British paradox. The Foreign
Secretary and his extremist advisers in Cairo and London had
their way in formulating policy ; but found themselves unable to
carry it out in practice. Half-way through the planned operation,
which began with the arrest of the leaders of the Jewish Agency
on Junu 29 and was meant to end with the breaking up of Haganah
and all Jewish political institutions, they had to call a halt. And
by stopping half-way they sealed their ultimate defeat.

A fortnight before it actually started, Haganah's illegal radio
transmitter, the Voice of Israel, revealed its knowledge of the
impending action. The military operations were to be aimed at
forty-nine Jewish towns and settlements, and foresaw, in addition
to the use of motorized infantry and armoured cars, the inter-
vention of artillery and units of the Royal Air Force to put down
resistance in Jewish settlements in case of necessity. A black-list
of several thousand leading personalities earmarked for arrest was
included in the operational plan. 3 The broadcast ended with a

1 Crum, op. dt. * Ibid.

3 A reference to this plan, corroborating the disclosures of the Haganah
broadcast, was made in Mr. Grossman's speech in the House of Commons
on July i, 1946, two days after the operation had started with the arrest of some
3000 leading Palestinian Jews :

". . . The course which the Government are now pursuing can only
lead to war. It will not stop the violence. It will precipitate violence. . . .
Why am I so certain ? Because of all the military experts in the Middle East
not one pretended that if this plan, which after all has been on the cards for
some time, were carried out, it would stop at the arrest of 2000 leaders. No,
this is the plan for the liquidation of the Haganah, and that means the liquida-
te

130 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

characteristic flourish : " The document is now public property.
Let the Yishuv, 1 the Diaspora and the whole world know what
Bevin, Attlee and their henchmen are preparing for us, and let
the world know that we shall fight."

To show that they meant business, the day after the announce-
ment Haganah disrupted road and railway communications all
over the country, cutting Palestine off from the neighbouring
states. One day later the Stern Group attacked the Government's
railway repair shops in Haifa, leaving 1 1 out of the 30 attackers
(including several girls) dead on the field. Another day later
Irgun kidnapped five British officers as hostages for two of
their own men under sentence of death. The Government
countered by the usual method of surrounding Jewish settlements
with troops and the mass arrest of settlers, causing the usual
number of dead and wounded ; but the initiative had been wrested
from them by the resistance movement. When, a fortnight after
it had been made public by Haganah, the master plan to liquidate
Jewish opposition was put into operation on June 29, it had lost
its element of surprise and went off at half-cock, as it were. The
headquarters of the Jewish Agency was occupied, its leaders
arrested, together with some 3000 officials of the Hebrew Labour
Party, the Trade Unions, Cooperatives, Communal Settlements
and so on ; but all the important commanders of Haganah had
by that time gone underground, and most of the arms stores had
been removed to new hiding-places.

The main reason, however, for the miscarriage of Mr. Bevin's
1 8th Brumaire in Palestine was Haganah's strategy of combining
active with passive resistance. Active sabotage was the task of its
mobile striking force, Pdhnakh a commando formation which
had gradually grown out of Wingate's Night Squads. But the
real strength of Haganah rested with its mass membership of some
40,000 settlers in over a hundred collective settlements dotted all
over the country.

Twenty-seven of the settlements were surrounded and searched

tion of a large number of men, women and children in Palestine. ... I ask
the Cabinet to refer to the secret minutes of our report, which are available
in the Foreign Office. Unless I am completely wrong, any large-scale arrest
of this sort was a preliminary to a large-scale campaign, and no expert I met
in Palestine advised that the campaign could be avoided. ..."

At this point the speaker was pulled up on a point of order for the impropriety
of quoting from secret documents.

1 Yishuv : the Jewish community of Palestine.

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 131

during the first three days of the operation by a task force esti-
mated at three divisions. The task which they were supposed to
carry out was to confiscate arms, to arrest the " ringleaders ", to
break down resistance. But when the spearhead of tanks or
armoured cars broke down the gates of a settlement, and the
troops advanced in formation with fixed bayonets " looking
either thunderously grim or patently scared " J they found no
resistance, only the startling sight of, as one official communique
put it, " men and women lying on the ground with legs and arms
interlocked, and refusing to move ".

Instead of the expected battle, the soldiers were confronted
with the grotesque task of dragging the passive resistants, in some
cases several hundred of them, one by one, into barbed- wire cages
for interrogation. When at last they got them there, with a fair
number of men and women bruised and wounded in the process,
the second anticlimax came : the settlers, to the last man and
woman, refused to be interrogated, refused to give their names
and answered all questions relating to their identity with the
monotonous statement : " I am one of the Jews of Palestine ".
All that the bewildered commander could do was to pick out at
random a certain proportion of the settlers and carry them off
" for further investigation " which proved as fruitless as the
first. Sometimes tear gas and oil jets had to be used to overcome
this passive resistance; but apart from some rough-housing,
pilfering and the standing joke of scrawling swastikas on the
walls, the troops found no occasion for any martial activity, and
were on the whole kept under restraint by their officers. Some
arms were unearthed in the settlements ; but Haganah being a
kind of conscript militia, with arms dispersed in small quantities
at the most unlikely hiding-places, the programme of " disarming
the Jews " as conceived by orthodox military minds, would in fact
have meant digging up the whole country from Dan to Beersheba.

Thus the first phase of the operation, which was intended to
be the decisive one, had only confirmed the old experience that
a resistance movement based on the passive support of an entire
nation cannot be defeated by any traditional military operation
short of a total extermination policy. And as neither the British
Government nor British public opinion was prepared to accept
the latter alternative, the great operation was bound to peter out
in inconclusive skirmishes. Moreover, once it had become clear

1 Trevor, op. cit. p. 129.

132 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

that Jewish resistance could not be broken except by a wholesale
massacre, it could be predicted that the Government was, in the
long run, doomed to defeat. Like all resistance movements, the
Palestine underground had the decisive advantages of anonymity,
invisibility and ubiquitousness which sooner or later must lead
to a process of attrition and demoralization of the regular occupy-
ing force.

2

The aftermath of the " i8th Brumaire " was a series of anti-
climaxes. The action produced the usual Storms of Protest and
Cries of Indignation. These, in a typically Palestinian manner,
became focussed on the person of 69-year-old Rabbi Fishman,
Acting Head of the Jewish Agency Executive, who, when arrested
on June 29, which was a Sabbath, was refused the privilege of
walking to jail, and forced to break the Law of Moses by riding
there in a car. The alleged statement of a soldier : " I walloped
him ", referring to the venerable rabbi, made particularly juicy
headlines.

The other after-effects of the misfired operation were in the
same strain. Among the approximately three thousand people
arrested there was not a single prominent terrorist or Haganah
leader or if there were any, they could not be identified. They
were released in batches, including the members of the Agency
Executive, who were freed on November 5. His Majesty's
Stationery Office published the text of some intercepted code
telegrams which were meant to prove what needed no proof,
namely, that there was collusion between Jewish Agency and
Haganah. The telegrams, full of curious cover-names, sounded
phoney and though in fact they were authentic, completely
missed their effect. It became increasingly obvious that neither
the Police nor the military were able to track down the terrorists
or Haganah leaders, and that the situation was from week to week
getting more out of hand.

From the abortive attempt to crush Jewish resistance to the
end of the Mandate, the British Government no longer acted on
any consistent plan ; its policy was a series of ad hoc measures
and improvisations. The first of these was the so-called Morrison
Plan, a scheme of Cantonization prepared by the Colonial Office
before the Labour Government had come to power ; it had been
rejected by the Anglo-American Committee after years of slumber

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 133

in a Colonial Office file, and was suddenly produced now by the
Cabinet as a new solution, like a rabbit out of a hat. Its basic
feature was to bar entry by Jews into 83 per cent of Palestine,
and to make immigration, even in the remaining 17 per cent,
dependent on the British High Commissioners ruling. The
admission of the 100,000 was made dependent on acceptance of
this plan. The scheme was outlined by Mr. Herbert Morrison in
the House of Commons on July 30, and promptly rejected by Jews,
Arabs and the White House.

The next rabbit was a new Palestine Round Table Conference
-in October. The invitations to it were rejected both by the Jews,
whose leaders were still detained in Palestine, and by the Palestine
Arabs ; the only people to attend were delegates of other Arab
States. The Conference having proved futile, it was adjourned
till better days. In the meantime, the Middle East experts of the
Foreign Office had a new machiavellian brain- wave and tried to
set up a puppet Jewish Agency as a kind of satellite Government.
A number of Jewish public figures with anti-Zionist leanings were
approached for this purpose, but to no avail.

The next idea of the Foreign Office, in September 1946, was
to ask those members of the Jewish Agency who had not been
arrested for " informal talks " to London, where they were offered
a bargain : if they gave up promoting illegal immigration their
arrested colleagues would be released. A more maladroit pro-
posal could hardly have been made ; and once more the rabbit
vanished back into the hat.

The last of these anxious improvisations which had to serve
in lieu of a policy was the so-called Bevin Plan, submitted to the
truncated Palestine Conference on February 7, 1947. It envisaged
the admission of 4000 immigrants per month for two years, after
which period further immigration would be made dependent on
an arbitration tribunal to be appointed by the United Nations
that is to say, on a cumbersome procedure and on all sorts of
international hazards. After a further three years the Jewish
minority would come under the domination of the Arab majority
in a unified and independent Arab State. In short, the Bevin
Plan of 1947 was another re-hash of the White Paper of 1939, and
was met by the same unconditional refusal on the part of the
Jews.

Ten days later, on February 18, 1947, the Foreign Secretary
stated in the House of Commons that the Government had decided,

134 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

in view of the Mandate having proved unworkable, to submit the
problem to the judgment of the United Nations.

3

There is a kind of symbiosis or mimicry at work, not only
between married couples, but also between chronic antagonists.
The negative relationship, like the positive, leads to a mutual
adaptation to and imitation of the opponent's methods and idio-
syncrasies. In the war against totalitarian Germany the Allies
were gradually forced to adopt the methods of total war, from the
broadcast lie to saturation bombing and Hiroshima. It is im-
possible to fight ruthlessness with considerateness, guile with
sincerity. Opponents in battle, like partners in understanding,
must meet on a common plane which is inevitably that of their
lowest common denominator.

During the last two years of the Mandate the relations between
English and Jews were confined to the lowest common de-
nominator of both. The Mandatory Administration and the
Jewish Agency vied with each other in ruthless action covered
by a film of oily hypocrisy. In the poisoned atmosphere of the
Holy Land, through a process of mutual contamination, each
brought out the evil latent in the other. During a mass screening
of the total population of Tel Aviv, which lasted four days, the
British troops divided the " sheep " from the " goats " by marking
them like cattle with different coloured dye on their foreheads ;
they heiled Hitler in Jewish settlements and desecrated synagogue
walls with swastikas. The Jews in their turn called Britons Nazis
in pamphlets and posters, and in a Press interview a Jewish writer
declared that every Englishman killed meant a holiday in his heart.
A British court sentenced a Jewish schoolboy to flogging for carry-
ing illegal leaflets ; Jewish terrorists kidnapped and flogged
British soldiers who had fought in the European war. British
officials hanged four Jewish maquisards, denying them the last
farewell to their families and the spiritual comfort of a rabbi's
presence ; Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants in an
orange grove, booby-trapping their dead bodies. Fanatic Jewish
gunmen killed British soldiers in their sleep ; drunken British
soldiers shot passing Jewish civilians in the back. The British
Administration passed emergency laws which turned the country
into a Police State, abolished Habeas Corpus, legalized detention

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 135

without trial, the deportation of Palestine citizens to British
colonies in Africa, 1 the hanging of people for membership of an
illegal group without any specific crime being proved, or even
charged, against them. The Jewish underground countered the
reign of legalized terror by individual terror which made every
Briton's life unsafe in Palestine.

On the top level both parties deplored acts of violence, declined
responsibility for them, and vied with each other in issuing
statements of sickening hypocrisy. Two examples, (a) and (i),
will illustrate the degree of insincerity which both sides had
reached.

(a)

On August 13, 1946, His Majesty's Government announced
that the practice of interning illegal immigrants (who managed to
reach the country despite the naval blockade) in Palestine detention
camps would be discontinued, and that such entrants would be
deported in future to " Cyprus or elsewhere ". This decree came
one year after the end of the war, four months after the Anglo-
American Committee's recommendation for immediate admission
of the 100,000, and a few weeks after the pogrom of Kielce, which
had only too clearly demonstrated the truth of the Committee's
finding that for the Jews of Europe there was no return. It should
also be remembered that the Committee's report had stressed that
for the overwhelming majority of European Jews Palestine was the
only country to which they could and wished to go, thereby
refuting the hoary allegation that illegal immigration was the
artificial product of a Zionist racket.

The immediate consequences of the deportation order were
as follows.

On August 1 1 two ships had arrived in Haifa within two hours
of each other. Both were sailing-boats ; one with an auxiliary
motor, the other without. The first, which carried only canvas,
was called the Yagur ; her 758 passengers included 350 women, 50
of whom were pregnant ; she had been at sea for twenty-nine days.
The second, called the Henrietta Szold, with 450 passengers, had
been at sea for fifteen days. All the passengers came from
concentration and D.P. camps with the only expectation of

1 Since October 1944 the Palestine Administration had adopted the legally
unique practice of deporting without trial politically suspect Palestine citizens
to the Sudan and Eritrea.

PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

changing residence from a D.P. camp in Germany to an intern-
ment camp in Palestine. The new decree destroyed this sanguin-
ary hope ; on August 13 an official communique announced that
" transfer of illegal immigrants from the Henrietta Szold and
Yagur to two transports has been successfully completed, and the
latter sailed from Haifa for Cyprus this morning ".

The communique was silent about the circumstances of the
successful completion of transhipment, which were as follows.
On the eve of the operation a whole infantry division, reinforced
by Sherman tanks, had moved into the port, to cut it off from the
city. Two cruisers of the Royal Navy, 1 escorted by several
destroyers and a screen of Police launches, surrounded the im-
migrant boats. One foreign correspondent cabled to his paper :
" It was considered unnecessary to have anti-aircraft guns ". The
deportees, weakened by the journey, offered only passive resistance
when they were led into the wire cages of the British transports,
ironically belonging to the category known as Liberty Ships.

While their transhipment was being carried out, thousands
of Jews in Haifa streamed towards the port. The situation of the
troops became critical, and they opened fire. Three people were
killed : a boy of 15, a girl of 19 and a man.

The next refugee ship to arrive was the 3OO-ton caique
Palmakh with 600 passengers. The Royal Navy captured the
ship at the fourth boarding attempt. The immigrants on board
entrenched themselves behind barricades. The boarding party
finally gained control of the vessel by using tear-smoke grenades
and oil sprays against them. During the operation one refugee
was killed and several wounded. About thirty young men and
women jumped overboard and swam towards the shore. They
were pursued by Police launches. The swimmers' arms were
branded with German concentration camp numbers. They
refused life-belts and resisted being pulled into the Police boats.
Four young men, who had swum over a mile, yelled that they
preferred drowning to deportation. They could only be saved
after soldiers had jumped into the water, knocked them out and
fastened ropes around them.

These were the first consequences of the deportation order in
terms of human suffering. It is against this background that the
official statement 2 by which the Government justified the deporta-

. ' H.M.S. Mauritius and H.M.S. Ajax.
2 Statement issued by H.M.G. on 13.8. 1946.

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 137

tion order should be appreciated. It opened with the affirmation
that " no country in the world has been a better or more consistent
friend of the Jewish people than Britain " and informed the world
at large that " in Britain there are no pogroms ". After describing
in moving terms the Government's " patience, forbearance and
humanity ", it called the mass exodus of Jews fleeing from the
Polish pogroms and the German D.P. camps a sinister traffic
organized by "unscrupulous persons " agents whose sole aims
were "to exploit the sufferings of these unfortunate people ", and
to annoy the Palestine authorities. As neither security reasons
nor the shortage of food could any longer be invoked as arguments,
as in the case of the refugee ships during the war, the continuation
of the same policy was now justified on the grounds that admission
of refugees placed " a severe strain on the administration ",
threatened civil war and a break-down of government, and was
" likely to have an adverse effect on the hope of a general settle-
ment ". The fact is that civil war broke out, and government
broke down, precisely because they refused admission to the
refugees.

(5)

The hypocrisy of the Government which fought refugees with
tear gas while posing as the best friend of the Jews found an equal
in the hypocrisy of its opponents. The Jewish Agency had
travelled a long way from the days when Haganah's first command-
ment was law-abiding self-restraint. The Arab revolt had been
rewarded by the White Paper ; Haganah's loyalty with a pat on
the shoulder and a kick in the pants. The lesson had sunk in
deeply with both the leadership and the rank and file. Step by
step Haganah had changed its methods from helping immigration
and accumulating arms for defence, to the sabotaging of railroads,
the blowing up of Police launches and attacks on R.A.F. stations
used for patrolling the seas. All this, Haganah claimed, was not
terrorism but part of their activities to aid immigration ; it could
hardly be expected, however, that the authorities should recognize
such subtle distinctions.

Moreover, since the end of 1945, when the Agency leaders had
declared all attempts on their part to fight terrorism under the
prevailing political conditions to be futile, the relations between
Haganah, Irgun and Stern Group had become extremely am-
biguous. While the Agency leaders and other official Jewish

138 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

bodies issued one public statement after another condemning
terrorism in sonorous language, Haganah at times quarrelled, at
others collaborated with the other terrorist groups. While colla-
boration thus alternated with mutual denunciation between the
rival underground groups, the Zionist leadership adopted the
classic attitude of the right hand not knowing what the left hand
is doing. By this double-faced policy the leaders of the Zionist
movement, as so often happened in its history, spoiled and dis-
credited their otherwise perfectly good case. The ambiguity of
their statements was not lost on the members of the Anglo-
American Committee.

" To-day ", writes Grossman, " Ben Gurion gave evidence,
and made a bad impression on the Committee. . . . He seems
to want to have it both ways, to remain within the letter of the
law as Chairman of the Agency, and to tolerate terror as a
method to bring pressure on the Administration ... to claim
constitutional rights for the Jewish Agency as a loyal colla-
borator with the Mandatory, and simultaneously to organize
sabotage and resistance/* l

On July 22, one month after the arrest of the leaders of the
Jewish Agency, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, seat of the
offices of the Governments secretariat, was blown up by members
of the Irgun. According to the Irgun practice, a warning of the
impending explosion was given by telephone twenty-five minutes
before it took place. The warning was disregarded, and the fact
that it had been given only admitted by the Government two
months later, in the indirect form that no such warning had been
received by anyone at the Secretariat " in an official position with
any power to take action ". The fact that the warning was given
cannot erase the moral responsibility for the act ; but to omit
mention of it would be to distort the evidence in the opposite
direction. In the explosion 91 persons Britons, Jews and
Arabs were killed, and 41 injured. The Hebrew Press the
next day was unanimous in condemning the outrage ; Davar, the
Labour daily, mouthpiece of the Jewish Agency, wrote :

" The entire Yishuv has been shocked to the core by
the criminal and abhorrent distortion given yesterday to the
struggle of the Jewish people by a gang of dissidents. This

1 Grossman, op. tit.

JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND 139

criminal massacre has no reason and no atonement. ... It is
a crime committed not only against the many dead and wounded,
but against the Jewish community and its future."

Yet in this case the gang of dissidents had acted on orders from
Haganah. And Haganah was under the direct orders of the
Jewish Agency. It is true that four members of the Agency
Executive were at the time in detention, and its Chairman, Ben
Gurion, absent in Paris ; the resulting disorganization and con-
fusion must be counted as a mitigating factor in judging the
official Jewish attitude. But the King David episode is merely
an extreme example of the general policy of the official Zionist
bodies. They preached resistance but denied indignantly acting
against the law; they alternately tolerated, fought against or
engaged in terrorism, according to the opportunity of the moment,
but all the time carefully maintained the fiction of being guardians
of civic virtue. Unlike the Irish rebels, the French resistance or
the Jewish terrorists, they never had the courage to go under-
ground and to harmonize their words with their acts. They had
learned their lesson in hypocrisy from the Mandatory Administra-
tion ; and the habits once acquired were partly carried over into
the newborn State.

But here, too, psychology has to be taken into account as a
mitigating factor. What to the outside world appeared as calcu-
lated hypocrisy, was often merely the outward projection of an
inner conflict in the minds of the leaders of the Jewish Agency.
True to their social-democratic tradition, they were, like the
Austrian and German Social Democrats, profoundly reluctant to
risk all they had built up in years of patient labour by embarking
on open revolt. More precisely, like their brother-Socialist parties
they regarded open fight as a last resource, and kept on trying,
hoping against hope, to achieve their aims by negotiation and
compromise, supported by half-hearted threats and token acts of
violence. The German Socialists never fought ; the Austrians
fought when it was too late. The Jewish Agency would probably
have shared, the same fate if the terrorists and the extremist
element within Haganah had not forced the pace, and had not
the British withdrawal confronted them with the choice to fight
or perish. Even a short time before the final decision, informal
negotiations took place between members of the Jewish Agency
and of the British Government, in which the former indicated
their willingness to accept the modest compromise of an increase

140 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the monthly immigration quota from 1500 to 4000, under a
continued British Mandate, and to postpone the final solution
sine die.

It was more than anything the intransigent attitude of the
Labour Cabinet, its insistence on a kind of " unconditional
surrender " of the Jewish Agency, which prevented a compromise
and brought the crisis to a head.

Without Mr. Bevin there would probably be no State of Israel
to-day.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS

Britain rejects the U.N. recommendations The miracle of
Russo-American agreement Palestine becomes a test
case for U.N.O. The Marx Brothers at Lake Success.

Evacuation of British civilians Reactions of Arabs
and Jews More bombs, hangings and prison breaks
The Farran case Exodus in reverse

As we approach the date of the termination of the British Mandate
and the proclamation of the Jewish State, the events which
constitute the " Background " of this chronicle move nearer to
the focus of the present, and overlap to an increasing degree with
the " Close-up " reports in the second part of this book. We shall
therefore accelerate the pace, and record only the main outlines
of the events which took place during this period of transition.

On February 18, 1947, the Foreign Secretary had referred the
Palestine problem to the United Nations. The United Nations
Assembly met on April 28, and on May 15 appointed a new
commission the nineteenth to find a solution for it.
The " United Nations Special Commission on Palestine "
U.N.S.C.O.P. headed by Judge E. Sandstroem (Sweden) and
composed of members of eleven nations, sojourned in Palestine
from the middle of June to the end of July. On September 26
U.N.S.C.O.P. submitted its majority report to the General
Assembly, which adopted it on November 29, 1947.

The conclusions of the report were essentially the same as
those reached by the Royal Commission ten years earlier : the
Mandate was unworkable and Partition the only possible solution.
And, as in the case of the Royal Commission's and the Anglo-
American Committee's reports, the British Government, having
asked for independent advice and received it, rejected it out
of hand. On December n, Mr. Creech Jones made public
Britain's refusal to implement U.N.S.C.O.P. 's majority report,

141

142 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

without offering any alternative policy; and at the same time
announced that His Majesty's Government had decided to bring
the Mandate to an end, and to withdraw from Palestine.

The United Nations' general debate opened in its Palestine
Committee on October 4, It was to be full of surprises and almost
surrealistic turns, true to the traditions of the Holy Land. During
the first days the great enigma was, what attitude the Soviet Union
and its satellite countries would take. The first clue was given
on the fourth day of the debate, when first the Polish, then the
Czech delegate, Jan Masaryk, supported Partition on the basis of
the U.N.S.C.O.P. Report. Then came the modern Palestine
miracle, which made even those who took no interest in the
problem hold their breath. Within two days of each other, on
the izth and i4th October respectively, the United States' and
the Soviet Union's delegates both came out in favour of Partition,
and for the first time in U.N.O. history found themselves together
on the same side of the fence.

It looked as if for once the United Nations were in a position
to solve an international problem in a harmonious, business-like
manner ; and once they started on this road, who knows how far
they might travel ? So Palestine again became a test case ; that
seemed to be its perpetual fate. That U.N.O. did not pass the
test was in this one exceptional case not Russia's, but Britain's,
fault.

On October 17 the British delegate, Mr. Creech Jones, made
his long-awaited statement, the gist of which was that

" His Majesty's Government would not accept responsibility
for the enforcement, either alone or in cooperation with other
nations , of any settlement antagonistic to either the Jews or the
Arabs or both, which was likely to necessitate the use of force."

The crucial passage is the one in italics. To make its meaning
quite clear, it has to be taken in conjunction with repeated official
British statements to the same effect, and in particular with the
Foreign Secretary's reply to a question on this matter in the House
of Commons on January 2, 1948 :

Mr. Warbey (Socialist, Luton) : " Do I understand from
what the Foreign Secretary has just said that if the Security
Council were to decide that collective enforcement action
was necessary in respect of Palestine, this country would
not take its share a one of the members of the United Nations ? ' '

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 143

Mr. Bevin : " That is what the Hon. Member must under-
stand. ..."

From here onward British policy can no longer be qualified
as muddled, short-sighted or pseudo-machiavellian ; it became
plainly surrealistic. Six months earlier Mr. Bevin had asserted
that he had no right to impose immigration on Palestine "by
force " ; but he had taken for granted the right to exclude immi-
gration by force. Britain had rejected the Anglo-American and
the United Nations Committees' recommendations on the grounds
that she could not carry them out alone ; now that international
assistance was offered, she refused even to take her share along
with others. Six months earlier the Foreign Secretary had re-
nounced Britain's Mandate on the grounds that the claims of Jews
and Arabs were irreconcilable and agreement between them
impossible ; from now onward British spokesmen kept repeating
that Britain would only support a solution which conciliated
Jewish and Arab claims, and was based on agreement between
the two. To appeal for the judgment of an international body
in order to stop two parties from quarrelling, and then to reject
the judgment because it meant enforcing peace between them,
was no longer diplomacy but sheer Harpo Marx logics.

The remaining six weeks of the U.N.O. debate took place in
the same Marx Brothers atmosphere. The vote was to take place
on October 21 ; but Mr. Creech Jones* statement, like a poisoned
arrow, threw the State Department into fits ; the miracle of
Russia's consent changed into the nightmare of having to side
with her against England. The White House took a somewhat
detached view of this, the State Department did not ; the shooting
war in Palestine became transformed into a tug-of-war in Washing-
ton. The heaves and tugs exerted from there in opposite direc-
tions found their visible expression in the somewhat jerky
behaviour displayed by the Central American banana republics
and by such parties to the Palestine dispute as Siam and Liberia.
On the day before the first vote was to take place, the anti-
Partitionist convictions expressed by the delegate from Cuba
were taken as an indication that the United States delegation were
lobbying for votes against their own resolution. Two days later
events took a new turn : instead of taking the decisive vote, the
Palestine Committee appointed three Sub-Committees : one to
elaborate the Partition plan, a second to deal with Arab proposals,

144 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

a third with the poetic task of " conciliating Arabs and Jews ".
" Because of the convolutions of the lengthy debate ", the
Palestine Post commented, " by the time it came to voting, most
delegations were not sure what they were voting for ".

The Sub-Committees settled down to work ; the Arab Sub-
Committee was composed of delegates of eight Moslem States
and of Colombia. " The only reason Snr. Gonzales agreed to
serve with the Arabs, was to appease the leader of his Govern-
ment's opposition, who is a wealthy Arab immigrant to Colombia",
the Palestine Post informed its readers.

In the Partition Sub-Committee the miracle of Russo- American
agreement was repeated. By November 11 the Sub- Committee
had agreed in detail on the boundaries of the proposed Arab and
Jewish States, and on the modalities of the transfer of power. On
November 14 the British delegate, Sir Alexander Cadogan, re-
jected this Soviet-American plan, declaring that British troops
would not be available for the enforcement of the proposed
settlement. A week later the Sub-Committee had a new plan
ready, in which the modalities of the transfer of power were altered
to suit the British delegate's previous objections. Sir Alexander
Cadogan rejected it, declaring that the transition regime under
U.N.O. tutelage now envisaged in the proposal " would create a
division of authority between Britain and the United Nations,
which in turn would create confusion and disorder and have
disastrous consequences. ..."

Furthermore and this declaration contained the clue to all
that happened afterwards the British delegate announced that

" So long as my Government will continue to hold the Mandate
for Palestine, they must insist upon their undivided control of
that country. . . . The transfer of authority by the Palestine
Government to the councils of government or their representa-
tives would in practice amount to the implementation of this
scheme by His Majesty's Government which, failing an Arab-
Jewish agreement, they are not prepared to undertake."

The meaning of this announcement was not fully appreciated
at the time, but became disastrously evident in Palestine during the
months to follow. It meant, in practice, that until the day when
Britain gave up the Mandate, she would continue in " undivided
control " of Palestine, refuse the gradual transfer of authority
either to U.N.O., or to the Jews and Arabs, and thus create a legal,

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 145

administrative and security vacuum a procedure unprecedented
in history. Its motto was that of the French monarch seeing his
world crumble : " Apres moi le deluge ". Thus began the last
melancholy chapter of British rule in the Holy Land, a manoeuvre
directly responsible for the war which followed and which may
be conveniently referred to as Operation Deluge.

To meet Britain's new objections, the recommendations of the
Sub-Committee were redrafted for the third time, and on Novem-
ber 24 the United States delegate came out with a massive speech
in favour of it. It was accompanied by an equally massive
criticism of " British policy, which has not been entirely helpful,
and which has made the work of our Committee difficult ". Two
days later U.N.O.'s Palestine Committee approved the Partition
plan by 25 votes to 13, and rejected the Arab plan by 29 votes to
12. The British delegate consistently abstained from voting, the
U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. consistently voted together.

The final 'decision now rested with the General Assembly,
where a two-thirds majority was required to pass the resolution.
The result of the ballot in the Committee had shown that the
pro-Partitionists were just one vote short. On the 2yth it became
known that the. Siamese delegate, who had voted against the
resolution, had been dismissed by his Government for unknown
reasons. But on the same day the Philippino delegate, who in the
Committee had abstained, made an enigmatic speech which was
neither here nor there. Once more the rebirth of the Jewish State
after two thousand years hinged on one vote that of the gentle-
man from the Philippine Islands.

On the 2yth the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem urged the Jewish
Community to pray at the Wailing Wall. That seemed to work,
for the delegate from Haiti, who the previous day had declared
that he would vote against, received last-minute instructions to
reverse his attitude. It also became known that the Chinese
delegate had been instructed to abstain, the Greek delegate, who
had previously abstained, to vote against. Other delegates cabled
and telephoned for instructions to their respective Governments,
from Costa Rica to Afghanistan, from Iceland to Peru. During
the three days between the vote in the Committee and the final
vote in the Assembly, not less than twelve delegates changed their
minds about the rights and wrongs of the issue. It looked as if
the Marx Brothers were playing General Post in the lobbies of
Lake Success, for the stake of the future of Israel.

L

146 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The result of the historic vote on November 29 was : 33 for
the Partition resolution (including the U.S.S.R., U.S.A. and
France) ; 13 against it (the eleven Moslem countries, Cuba and
Greece) ; and 10 abstentions (including Britain, alone among
the Great Powers, and alone among the countries of the British
Commonwealth, all the rest of which voted for).

On that evening and during the night Jews danced and sang
in the streets of New York and Tel Aviv, of Belgrade and Vienna,
in the D.P. camps in Germany and in the fortress-settlements of
Galilee. In the synagogues prayers of thanks were offered for the
resurrection of Israel. It was Jewry's V-day the first since the
time of the Maccabeans.

On the morrow of the decision the Palestine Arab Higher
Committee decided on a three days* strike ; synagogues and
Jewish houses were burnt down in Aleppo, and seven Jews were
murdered in a convoy ambush near Tel Aviv. Th^ civil war had
begun ; and the focus of events shifted back from Lake Success
to Palestine.

During the months preceding the United Nations' decision
the Anglo-Jewish sub-war had reached its climax. Hangings,
kidnappings, murder and deportations had become daily occur-
rences.

On January 31, 1947, the Government had decided to evacuate
from Palestine all British women, children and male civilians in
non-essential jobs. British journalists, business men and clergy,
if they wished to stay behind, would do so at their own risk. It
was the first plain indication, a fortnight before Mr. Bevin
referred the problem to U.N.O., that Britain was unable to cope
with the terrorists, and was preparing to pull out of Palestine.

The reaction of the various parties concerned to this momentous
event was psychologically significant. The British business men
sent a cable of protest to the Cabinet declaring that the evacuation
" constituted a surrender to the terrorist elements " which in
fact it did. The Arab Press could not believe that British might
and power had been defeated by Jewish resistance, and suspected
some particularly diabolic scheme behind the evacuation order :

" Can you conceive ", wrote Falastin, " of such a state of
affairs in a country ruled by Britain and where she has mustered
100,000 soldiers, that is one fully equipped soldier to every five

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 147

Jews ! By Allah, if we were asked what was the greatest lie
ever told, we would say that it is the reason given for the
evacuation. . . . No, the . . . Government is taking advantage
of terrorism for its own imperialistic aims in Palestine. It is
turning the country into a military camp and thereby threatening
the peace of the world."

Most revealing of all was the reaction of the official Jewish
circles and newspapers. They were furious that the end of British
rule, for which they had clamoured, had been brought within sight
not by prayers in the synagogues and Agency protests, but by the
action of the rival " dissidents ". Thus the Palestine Post, mouth-
piece of the Jewish Agency, wrote : x

" If ... the consequences implied in the evacuation order
take their repressive and demoralizing shape, the effect upon
the psychology of this country's citizens, as well as upon their
social and economic life, may well be disastrous. ... It beggars
thought that any government should desire so to flatter a group
of dissidents or so to drive a hard-working and peace-loving
people to unwilling association with methods it hates and
condemns."

The immediate antecedents of the evacuation order were in
the best Palestinian cloak-and-dagger style. On January 24 the
G.O.C., General Barker, had confirmed sentence of death on a
member of Irgun, Dov Gruener. On the 26th the condemned
man refused to appeal for the King's clemency ; on the same day
Irgun kidnapped two Englishmen, a judge and a former army
officer, as hostages for Gruener. One day later, on the 2yth, the
G.O.C. granted a stay of execution for Gruener so that his case
might be taken to the Privy Council. One day later, on the 28th,
the two Englishmen were released. The judge declared that he
had been treated with courtesy, given a bed, good food, cigarettes,
and a book to read (which happened to be a novel by this author).
He professed that he felt no resentment against his captors, who
had kept his wig as a souvenir.

The subsequent events were in a less decorous style. Dov
Gruener was hanged three months later under particularly revolt-
ing circumstances, to which reference has been made earlier. 2
After the evacuation of the civilians the country was gradually
transformed into an armoured camp. Jews were evicted from the

1 On February 2, 1947. 2 Cf. p. 134*

140 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

residential quarters in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv without
being offered alternative accommodation. The blocks thus freed
were transformed into British Security Zones small fortified
enclaves surrounded by fantastic tangles of barbed wire and
sandbagged barricades, locally known as " Bevingrads " or
" British ghettoes ". Yet none of these precautions could stem
the tide of terrorism.

On February 10 three members of Irgun were sentenced to be
hanged on the sole charge of having been found in possession
of arms on December 29, 1946, the night when British Army
personnel had been flogged by terrorists in retaliation for the
caning of a young Irgun boy. On March i twelve British soldiers
and Police were killed when the British Officers' Club in one of
the " Security Zones " of Jerusalem was blown up under cover
of machine-gun fire. The next day statutory Martial Law was
put into force in Tel Aviv and parts of Jerusalem. For over two
weeks 240,000 Jews about 40 per cent of the total Jewish
population were denied postal, telephone, telegraph and motor
transport services, and completely cut off from the outside world.
No goods or persons were allowed to leave the Martial Law area ;
all public services were closed, and life was paralysed. It was a
measure of collective punishment, whose only effect was to increase
the number of recruits and sympathizers for the terrorist groups.
The attackers of the Officers' Club were never caught, and during
the whole 'Martial Law period terrorist action continued. On
March 16 the Press Offices of the Jewish Agency were blown up
by a time-bomb ; it was believed that this and a series of similar
bombings were the work of a counter-terror squad within the
British Police Force, composed of former members of Mosley's
Blackshirts.

In April four terrorists were hanged, among them Dov
Gruener. Two others succeeded in blowing themselves to bits
in their prison cell, before they could be hanged, by means of
smuggled hand-grenades which they pressed under their armpits.
All of them had refused to take part in their trials, and had sat
through the proceedings reading the Bible or reciting the Psalms
of David. The executions were followed by a new wave of assassi-
nation, bomb-throwing and mine-laying, which caused fourteen
deaths within the next few days ; on the scene of each attack the
terrorists left a hangman's noose as their signature.

On May 6 a Jewish boy of 16, suspected of being a member of

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 149

the Stern Group, was abducted from a street in Jerusalem by a
group of plain-clothes policemen, working under the orders of
Major R. A. Farran, D.S.O. He shouted for help ; passers-by
tried to rescue him, but desisted when the men produced their
Police cards.

" The boy appears to have been taken to an isolated spot
outside the city and tortured to death. No trace has been found
of the body. The incident created a deep stir. Several weeks
later it became known that Major Farran had escaped to Syria,
and that a request for his extradition had been made. He was
actually handed over, but escaped from military detention at the
Allenby Barracks in Jerusalem, apparently with the assistance
of members of the special anti-terrorist squad to which he
belonged. He subsequently surrendered to the police." *

Farran was tried by a military court-martial on October i,
1947, having previously been released from his Police duties so
that he could revert to Army status. At the court-martial counsel
for the defence objected to having the defendant's diary produced
as evidence on the grounds that the diary was part of his defence ;
the objection was granted. Farran's superior officer, Colonel
B. Ferguson, refused to testify about certain statements which
Farran had made to him, on the grounds that his testimony
would be self-incriminatory. (Colonel Ferguson resigned from
service a short time later.) On October 2 Farran was acquitted.
On his arrival in Liverpool harbour he was cheered by a crowd
of several thousands. His memoirs were serialized by a popular
English Sunday paper. His brother was killed by a letter-bomb
sent by the Stern Group.

The last episode to be recorded in this weary tale is Irgun's
attack on the penitentiary in Acco, which led to the escape of over
a hundred political prisoners (and some Arab criminals who took
advantage of the occasion) through a hole blown in the massive
walls of the Napoleonic fortress. Several of the attackers were
wounded, and subsequently captured and hanged. Their death
was avenged by Irgun with a barbarity surpassing everything the
country had previously seen : two British soldiers, Sergeants
Martin and Plaice, were found hanged in an orange grove, with
booby-traps attached to their dead bodies.

During all this time more refugees kept arriving at the shores

1 Memorandum presented by the Jewish Agency to the United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine, Jerusalem, 1947, p. 42.

150 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of Palestine and leaving it again in the cages of British deporta-
tion ships. The circumstances of these unique naval engagements
were always more or less the same. The little hell-ships were
spotted at sea by R.A.F. patrols, escorted to Haifa by units of
the Royal Navy, and the passengers forcibly transferred to the
deportation ships by marines and airborne troops. As a rule,
their resistance was overcome by tear gas, oil jets and baton
charges. As a rule, there were one or two dead and a score or so
wounded and trampled down, with women screaming and babies
suffering the shock which made them later on into interesting cases
of refugee-neurosis. The legal aspect of the deportations was not
without a touch of grim humour : when writs of Habeas Corpus
were filed before Palestine courts on behalf of the refugees, the
courts upheld the deportations after members of the administra-
tion had stated in evidence that the granting of permission to land
would be " prejudicial to public security ". The bearing on public
security of the battles for their transhipment, of the riots,
bombings and assassinations, which were their direct consequence,
seems in each case to have escaped the court's attention.

The war was over, the floods had receded, the Government had
changed ; yet this human wreckage was still being aimlessly tossed
about as " illegal immigrants ". After about twenty boat-loads
of them had been carried off in the manner described to yet
another concentration camp their fifth or sixth or tenth the
Government decided that it had been carrying leniency too far.
Cyprus was too near to Palestine, and the D.P.s interned there
might think that they had, after all, made some headway towards
their ultimate destination ; which in turn might encourage others
to follow their example. The obvious solution was to deport the
D.P.S, not to Cyprus, but back to Germany. In July the 4300
passengers on board the refugee ship with the symbolic name
Exodus 1947, after three of their number had been killed in
boarding operations off the coast of the National Home, were
shipped back as prisoners aboard three British transport ships
across the Mediterranean, round the coast of Spain, through the
English Channel and across the North Sea to Hamburg, port of
the country which had become their national cemetery. The
journey in the blistering heat lasted forty-six days of which
twenty-five days were spent off Marseilles, the French Govern-
ment having offered asylum to the deportees, which the latter,
with a few exceptions, refused. Each stage of the journey was

THE MIRACLE OF LAKE SUCCESS 151

spot-lighted by the world Press ; for weeks on end Britain was the
target of more humiliating comment by her friends and foes alike
than at any other time in recent history.

It was indeed an exploit as pointless as it was symbolic. His
Majesty's Government seemed to have taken it upon themselves,
by reversing the Exodus, to turn back the tide of history.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CIVIL WAR

The showdown begins The battle of the convoys
Infiltration from the neighbouring countries Ambiguous
status of the Arab Legion British arms deliveries to
Transjordan and Iraq.

Haganah goes into action From convoy defence to
punitive raids The storming of Castel The victory of
Mishmar Ha'emek The blood-bath of Deir Yassin Its
extraordinary repercussions The Arab exodus The
surrender of Tiberias The battle for Haifa The sur-
render of Jaffa The Jews take Safed, Beisan and modern
Jerusalem They lose the Old City and five settlements

I

MEANWHILE the United Nations Commission had arrived in
Palestine, and with the beginning of the Palestine debate in
October 1947 a temporary lull descended on the country. The
interlude in Lake Success constituted the dividing line between
the Anglo- Jewish struggle which had preceded it and the Arab-
Jewish struggle which followed the passing of the Partition
resolution in the Assembly.

The final showdown began on the day after the historic vote ;
it passed through a series of continuous gradations from raids and
riots to full-scale civil war, and from there to the war of inter-
vention of the six Arab States against Israel. This last phase began
on the day of the termination of the Mandate, May 15, 1948 ;
until that date the civil war was fought in a country still, on
Britain's insistence, under " undivided British control ",* and in
which the British Government of Palestine remained " responsible
for law and order ". 2

The initial phase was characterized mainly by Arab attacks on
Jewish motor- vehicle convoys on the main arterial roads ; by
street fighting on the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border and in the Old City

1 Cf. i.a., statement by Sir Alexander Cadogan on November 21, 1947-
2 Cf. i.a., statement by the Colonial Secretary on December n, 1947.

THE CIVIL WAR 153

of Jerusalem ; and by bomb outrages in crowded places. The
strategically most important aspect during this phase were the
attacks on the convoys which aimed at paralysing Jewish road
traffic, cutting off Jerusalem's life-line to Tel Aviv and starving
out the isolated Jewish settlements in the Negeb and in Galilee.
The battles of the convoys fought in this period at the gorge of
Bab el Wad, where the Jerusalem road emerges into the plain,
and along the roads to Galilee and the Negeb, were probably the
most cruel and savage encounters of the whole struggle. To this
day the roadsides of Palestine are littered with the carcasses of
burnt-out motor-buses, their wheels pointing to the sky like the
legs of dead horses. At least once a week a Jewish convoy with
food supplies for Jerusalem or the settlements would run into an
Arab road-block or mine and find itself surrounded by a mob of
several hundred Arabs who riddled the passengers with machine-
gun bullets and set the buses on fire. There were, as a rule, few
survivors, as those who sought protection in the buses were burnt
alive, the others mowed down.

The British authorities refused to provide escorts for Jewish
convoys because, as a senior Government official informed the
Jewish Agency on December 3, "that might be interpreted as
British implementation of partition ".* At the same time, they
refused to authorize the Jews to provide their own protection for
the convoys by using the armoured cars of the Settlement Police ;
they even refused to allow the passengers, or at least the drivers,
to carry arms.

On January 22, to quote one example among many, seven
Jewish Settlement Policemen, travelling in an open tender because
of the ban on armoured cars, were killed in an Arab ambush and
their dead bodies mutilated. Seven days later, on January 29, a
Colonel Nelson at British H.Q. informed representatives of Jewish
settlements in the same vicinity that they could not use armoured
cars " since it arouses the Arabs ". 2 On December 21 the Under-
secretary of State for the Colonies had informed the House of
Commons that the Government did not consider the arming of
Jewish bus drivers advisable, " since the carrying of firearms by
vehicle drivers does not constitute effective protection ". So the
convoys often had to proceed without any protection whatsoever.
When the Executive of the Jewish National Council, whose

1 Memorandum presented by the Jewish Agency to the United Nations
Palestine Commission, Jerusalem, 1947* P- 6 z &*& P- **

154 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

members were obliged constantly to travel between Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv, improvised armoured plating on their car, the car was
confiscated by British Police on completion of its first journey.
The logical result of all this was that on an average fifty Jews were
killed per week, mostly by travelling in unprotected convoys, and
that in some cases over fifty were killed on a single convoy. The
conditions which prevailed during this period are further illus-
trated by incidents like the Government's solemn assurance, on
Thursday, December 25, that their security forces were taking
care of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road which would now be kept
open and safe, and the ambushing and assassination on this
same road of seven Jewish travellers the next day. It should be
noted that this vital road is all in all 40 miles long, and can be
easily patrolled by a relatively small number of modern police
cars.

The probably most tragic incident occurred, symbolically, on
the slopes of Mount Scopus. The Hebrew University and the
great Hadassah Hospital both stand on this hill, separated from
the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem by Arab suburbs. In December
Arab snipers had continually attacked Jewish road traffic to the
Hospital and University, and killed one nurse, wounding several
others. Yet at a Press conference on January 21 the Government
spokesman placidly explained that c e armoured escorts are not granted
to ambulances because ordinary considerations of humanity should
render them immune to attacks ". Again the inevitable happened :
on April 13 a convoy carrying hospital and university personnel
was ambushed on its way to Mount Scopus. In the attack 77
Jews were killed, among them the Director of the Hospital, and
20 wounded.

The Arab intention behind these attacks was obvious : the
Jews were to be forced off the highways of Palestine. Once this
aim was achieved, the Jewish enclaves of Jerusalem, in the Negeb
and in Galilee, as well as the isolated settlements dotted all over
the country, would be cut off, made defenceless, and would have
to be evacuated. The impossibility of Partition would thus be
proved, and the whole plan would collapse. The British attitude
was equally evident : to protect Jewish road traffic, or to legalize
Jewish self-protection on the roads, would amount to " enforcing
implementation of the partition plan " and was therefore not
feasible. It is true that the Government was responsible for order
and public security, but as long as the Jews stayed at home and

THE CIVIL WAR 155

did not travel on the roads the security of most of them was
assured. As for those enclaves which depended on supplies by
road transport, the Government's advice was that the Jews should
evacuate them. Among the positions which the Government
officially advised the Jews to evacuate for reasons of security
were the Old City and the old Commercial Centre of Jerusalem,
and the entire Negeb.

On February 15 the United Nations Palestine Commission
submitted a Special Report to the Security Council, which pointed
out that " powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside
Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly, and
are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement
envisaged therein ". The first attempt towards this end had been
the battle of the convoys. It \vas soon followed by the next stage :
the infiltration of Arab guerillas, openly recruited by the Egyptian
and Syrian Governments, across the frontiers of Palestine and by
sea. Ragged strangers kept appearing in increasing numbers in
Arab villages and towns a reminder of the invasion by German
tourists of Spain before the Civil War. They were referred to
by the neighbouring Arab Governments as Volunteers, and were
in fact, apart from a small number of professional officers, the
riff-raff of the bazaars in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad, hired
for the Holy War for a shilling or two per day. 1 As the Palestine
Arabs showed little willingness to fight, most of the sniping,
ambushing and guerilla warfare was done by the foreign volunteers.
It was typical of this state of affairs that after the first serious
clashes had occurred between Arabs and Jews in Tiberias (on
the nth and i4th March) the heads of the two communities
arranged a truce, the Arab delegates stating that the attackers of
the Jewish quarter were ** strangers who had forced their way into
the town ".

Infiltration of irregulars from Syria had already played a
decisive part during the Arab revolt of 1936-39. At that time
the British authorities had kept their number down by fortifying
the Syrian border (by the so-called Teggart Line) ; now their
attitude was one of strict neutrality, of " non-intervention against
foreign intervention ", true to the pattern of the Spanish war.
Thus on January 16 Associated Press reported from Damascus
that Syrian irregulars were sifting by the hundred across un-

1 The Iraqi and Syrian irregulars captured later on by the Israeli Army
stated that their pay had been between 3 and $ a month.

156 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

guarded sections of Palestine's northern frontier. On January 19
the Jewish Agency warned British G.H.Q. that 800 armed Syrians
were concentrated at Irbid in Transjordan, and were preparing
to cross into Palestine at Sheikh Hussein or over the Allenby
Bridge which they actually did two days later. They moved
into prepared camps at Tubas in the Samarian hills. Yet in his
statement in the Commons a week later (February 4) the Colonial
Secretary gave the impression that the invaders had taken the
Government by surprise. On January 30 another 800 armed
Arabs crossed into Palestine from Transjordan, escorted by Arab
Legionaries. 1 On February 5 Associated Press reported from
Damascus that " 600 trained Syrians had crossed the Jordan on
Tuesday (3.2. 48) night, and moved into prepared positions 60 km.
inside Palestine ". On the gth Davar reported that another 1000
Arabs, armed with light artillery and automatics, had crossed into
Palestine unhindered between February 5 and 7. On February 1 1
the British delegate to the United Nations Palestine Commission
admitted that bands of Arab invaders were " increasingly exer-
cising considerable administrative control over the whole area "
of Samaria. Apparently these men, who were beyond doubt
Illegal Immigrants, were more favoured by the Administration
than the D.P.s who were still being deported to Cyprus, on
the grounds that their admission would " be prejudicial to public
security ".

On February 14 Haganah blew up five bridges in Galilee to
check infiltration ; on March 3 the Colonial Secretary told the
House that 5000 Arabs had invaded Palestine since November 29,
and on the i6th he added that Fawzi el Kaukaji, leader of the Arab
revolt of 1936-39, had " slipped through the border guards " and
arrived in Palestine. By that time a whole army of irregulars, in
its great majority Syrian and Lebanese, variously referred to as
the Yarmuk Army or the Arab Army of Liberation, was fighting
a pitched three-day battle against Haganah in the Valley of
Esdraelon, while the spokesmen of the Government still re-
peated, poker-faced, that Britain insisted on being alone responsible
for the maintenance of law and order.

Besides these tourist armies there was encamped on Palestine

soil the regular army of a neighbouring Arab State under British

operational command. The Arab Legion, this strange military

hermaphrodite, owed allegiance to King Abdullah of Transjordan,

1 Palestine Past, February i, 1948.

THE CIVIL WAR 157

was officered, financed and equipped by Great Britain, and, to
make things more complicated, though it wore an alien king's
cloth, acted as part of the British security forces in Palestine.

Clashes between Jews and members of the Legion were
frequent and inevitable. Thus, on December 15, troops of the
Arab Legion attacked a Jewish supply convoy on its way from
Tel Aviv to the Children's Village at Ben Shemen and killed
fourteen Jews. In Haifa, passengers of Jewish buses were sniped
at while passing the Arab Legion camp, sometimes with fatal
results. When the Mandate ended, on May 15, the Arab Legion's
status as a British security force changed overnight into that of a
regular army of invasion still owing allegiance to King Abdul-
lah, and still under British command.

While tolerating the infiltration and assembly of irregular
armies, and maintaining a regular Arab army on Palestine territojy,
the British Government continued to supply the Arab countries
with war material. On December 12-17 the Prime Ministers
of the seven Arab States Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Yemen met in Cairo and
issued an official statement to the effect that they would support
the Palestine Arabs with arms, money and troops, and that their
armies would march against the Jews as soon as the British
Mandate ended. Yet a short time after, on February 6, 1948, the
British Minister of Defence justified British arms deliveries to
the Arab countries by explaining that his Government " had no
reason to suppose " that arms assigned to Arab States under
treaties would "find their way to Palestine". The statement
referred to the new Anglo-Iraqi treaty, signed on January 15, in
which Britain undertook to supply " provisions for the forces of
His Majesty the King of Iraq, of arms, ammunition, ships and
airplanes of modern pattern, such as are in current use by the
forces of His Britannic Majesty ".

On March 15 Great Britain signed a new twenty years' treaty
of mutual defence and friendship with Transjordan, according to
which the latter was to continue to get arms, ammunition, military
equipment and other war materials from Britain ; should either
party become engaged in war the other undertook to come to its
aid. It was simultaneously reported that Britain would continue
to pay King Abdullah his annual two million pounds grant for the
maintenance of the Arab Legion, and that Brigadier Glubb Pasha
and his staff would remain in command of the Legion.

PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" In this situation ", the Jewish Agency stated on February 21
in its memorandum to the United Nations Palestine Commission,
" the Jewish people in Palestine have come to recognize that
only their own forces stand between them and annihilation. Faced
with the Government's neutrality in the issue of their survival
or extermination ... the Jews of Palestine have assumed a
responsibility which formally rests on the Mandatory Power. "

At last the Jewish Agency had awakened to a full awareness of
the situation and began to show that determined self-reliance which
nationhood implies. This was no longer the mealy-mouthed
protest of a committee of lawyers and synagogue elders, but the
matter-of-fact voice of a nation at war.

Haganah's operations in these crucial six months developed
gradually, as the Arab plan of attack took shape, from local
defensive action in the battles of the convoys to retaliation and
counter-attack ; and culminated in an offensive which resulted
in the conquest of the entire territory of the Jewish State. These
operations were partly carried out in areas still under nominal
British control, and partly in the vacuum created by the piecemeal
withdrawal of the British forces from Palestine.

The first time Haganah forces came out in more or less open
action was in the inconclusive skirmishes against Arab snipers on
the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border at the beginning of December. For the
next few weeks its mobile forces were employed to go to the
rescue of convoys which had run into an ambush, and of isolated
settlements attacked by Arab bands. It was a harassing job against
heavy odds, and the toll in casualties was severe. Thus, for
instance, on January 17 a unit of 35 Haganah men rushing to
the relief of Kfar Eftzion in the Hebron area was surrounded
by Arab irregulars and killed to the last man.

Gradually Haganah went over from passive defence to punitive
raids on Arab villages known to harbour irregulars. After a
convoy attack originating from the Arab village of Silwan near
Jerusalem, in which 7 Jews were killed, Haganah, on December 17,
stormed the village and dynamited a number of houses. These
actions were based on the example of the punitive methods used
by the British Army during the Arab revolt of 1936-39. On
January 24 Haganah went into action near Mount Castel on the
Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road ; 40 Arabs and 10 Jews were killed, 4

THE CIVIL WAR 159

of the latter by British troops. On February 15 Haganah raided
Beisan, strategic key town at the junction of the Jordan and
Jezreel valleys.

In March events began to move faster as the evacuation of
British troops got under way. 1 The first prolonged battle, a
ten-day attack on the Jewish village of Magdiel by Iraqi troops
entrenched in the neighbouring A, .o village of Bir Adas, ended
with the withdrawal of the invaders and peace overtures from the
villagers. In a punitive action on the i3th of the same month,
Haganah destroyed the Arab village of Kafr Husseinia in Galilee,
killing 30 villagers. A few days later its forces began a concen-
trated drive deep into Arab territory in the Beisan- Jenin area,
striking at villages which were used as bases for attacks on Jewish
settlements in the Jordan Valley. This phase of fluid guerilla
fighting ended on April 2, when Haganah not only raided, but
occupied and held the strategic village of Castel, which dominates
the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road on the western approaches of the
ancient capital. For ten days Syrian and Iraqi troops, who were
now doing practically all the fighting on the Arab side, counter-
attacked and were repulsed. They finally broke the fight off, after
their commander, Abdul Kader Husseini, cousin of the Mufti,
had been killed in the action.

During the same days the second decisive battle of the civil
war was being fought at Mishmar Ha'emek, 2 a Jewish settlement
in the area where the Jewish Valley of Jezreel borders on the Arab
hills of Samaria. The attackers were the Arab Liberation Army,
personally commanded by Fawzi el Kaukaji, and equipped with
modern British arms, from medium tanks to automatics, which
had found their normal way to the battlefield via the Iraqi and
Transjordan Governments. After holding its ground for several
days, Haganah on April 9 went over to the offensive, took seven
Arab villages, and decisively routed Fawzi's army. The proudest
trophy of the victors was Fawzi Bey's personal staff car, an Ameri-
can luxury make decorated with crescent moons.

During this whole period the two terrorist groups had been
fighting their private war against both Britons and Arabs by
hurling bombs into Arab market-places, blowing up British troop
trains, and participating in the defence of the Old City Ghetto of
Jerusalem. A week after Haganah had taken Castel, a combined

1 The first 1800 troops left Haifa for Liverpool on March 5, and another
draft of 2000 on the 7th. * " The Watchpost of the Valley."

l6o PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

force of Irgun and Stern Group stormed the Arab village of Deir
Yassin in the same area. Two hundred and fifty Arabs were
killed in the action, among them a large number of women and
children. Later in the same day, groups of Arab men and women
captured in the village, including the Mukhtar and his family,
were paraded through Jerusalem in open trucks and then turned
over to the British Army.

The near-simultaneous Arab defeats in the decisive battle of
Mishmar Ha'einek, in Castel and Deir Yassin, and the departure
of British troops, started a sudden panicky flight of the Arab
population all over the mixed territories of Palestine. It had the
character of a landslide. The psychologically decisive factor in
this spectacular Arab exodus was the last of the three episodes
mentioned. The blood-bath of Deir Yassin was the worst atrocity
committed by the terrorists in their whole career, and an isolated
episode in the war between Arabs and Jews. It had extraordinary
repercussions. The Jewish Agency issued a statement expressing
" its horror and disgust at the barbarous manner in which this
action was carried out ", and took the unusual step of cabling the
statement to King Abdullah of Transjordan, the leading prince in
the enemy coalition. The Chief of the Transjordan Royal Cabinet
cabled back, not without logic, that as the Jewish Agency spoke
in the name of all the Jews of Palestine, it would have to take the
responsibility for their acts.

The Jewish Agency's cable was naturally played up by Arab
propaganda as an admission by the Jews of their own barbarity,
and as a confirmation of all the atrocity tales previously put out.
For the next forty-eight hours all Arab radio stations were engaged
in non-stop broadcast descriptions of the bayoneting of pregnant
women and the impaling of infants, adorned with the lurid detail
of oriental imagination. The effect of this propaganda was the
exact opposite of its aim : the Arab population was seized with
panic, and fled from villages and towns with the pitiful cry :
"Deir Yassin".

On April 17 the first large town with a mixed population,
Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, 1 was deserted by its Arab in-
habitants. Three days later British troops evacuated Haifa and
withdrew to small fortified enclaves in the port area and on Mount
Carmel. As they withdrew, the battle for Haifa, key port of the
Levant, with a population of 60,000 Jews and 70,000 Arabs,
1 The Sea of Galilee is now usually referred to as Lake Tiberias.

THE CIVIL WAR l6l

began. It was over after one night ; the Syrian mercenaries were
routed and the entire Arab population of Haifa, with the exception
of some 2000, started their weary trek towards the Lebanon or
into the hills of Samaria. 1

On April 25, after five months of skirmishing on the Tel Aviv
borderline, Irgun launched its offensive against Jaffa second
important harbour in Palestine and its biggest purely Arab town,
with a population bordering on 100,000. Two days later, when
Irgun forces had penetrated to the immediate vicinity of the town
centre, Haganah joined in the attack. On the same day the
Palestine Government warned the Jews that the British Army
would prevent the capture of Jaffa by force. On April 28 British
artillery started shelling Jewish positions in Jaffa, and British
troops moved into positions between the Jewish and Arab lines.
A deadlock followed, which lasted for a fortnight, until the final
evacuation of Jaffa by the British. Two days before the evacuation
was due to take place, the Palestine Government offered to nego-
tiate a truce in Jaffa, but Haganah refused British mediation and
insisted on direct negotiations with the Arabs. On May 12 the
British left Jaffa. On May 13 the Arab Emergency Committee
in the town signed the surrender terms presented by the Tel Aviv
area Haganah commander. The Arab population left, as in the
case of Haifa and Tiberias ; only some 4000 stayed behind.

It was the same story in the other mixed or purely Arab towns
and villages over the whole area allocated to the Jews by the
United Nations decision. Safed, key town of Northern Galilee,
fell on May 10 its 12,000 Arabs fled before its 1500 Jews in the
wake of the withdrawing British troops. Beisan, last of the Arab
towns in Jewish territory, surrendered on May 12, three days
before the termination of the Mandate. By the same day the
entire 1 5-mile stretch of mountain highway between Bab el Wad
and Jerusalem was in Jewish hands. The British Security Zones
of Jerusalem, which comprised the strategically decisive buildings
of the modern centre, were occupied by the Jews the day after the
British troops left, on May 14. The conquest of the new city was

1 The cable in which the High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham,
reported the battle of Haifa, began as follows :

" The Jewish attack on Haifa was a direct consequence of continuous
attacks by Arabs on Jews in Haifa over the previous four days. The attack
was carried out by the Haganah, and there was no massacre.

" Arabs in Haifa were thus themselves responsible for the outbreak in
spite of our repeated warnings.'*

M

162 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

completed with the capture of the Allenby Barracks, and that of
the Arab Sheikh Jarrah quarter two days later. Only the Old City
within the walls remained in Arab hands ; and within the Old
City the ancient Jewish Ghetto formed an isolated enclave.

The only losses suffered by the Jews were five settlements in
the area allocated by the Partition Plan to the Arabs. Beit
Ha'aravah, an isolated experimental settlement on the Dead Sea,
was evacuated without fight. 1 The other four settlements, known
as the Kfar Eftzion group, were situated in the purely Arab area
between Bethlehem and Hebron. They had been cut off, and
constantly attacked for three months by irregulars reinforced by
troops of the Arab Legion ; supply convoys trying to fight their
way through to them had suffered the heaviest casualties in the
whole battle of the convoys. On May 13 Kfar Eftzion fell to the
Arab Legion ; the next day the remaining three settlements
surrendered. The surviving settlers were sent by the Arab Legion
as " prisoners of war " to Amman ; this was probably the only
action of the Government which might be interpreted as an
implementation of the United Nations' Partition resolution. 2

On May 14, when Israel proclaimed its independence, there
were only a few thousand scattered Arabs left in the territory of
the new State ; round 300,000 Arab refugees, deserted by their
leaders, lacking both the will and the organization to fight, had
sought refuge in the Arab part of Palestine or in the neighbouring
states.

1 This settlement had embarked on the strange experiment of de-salinating
the soil of the barren area where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood.

2 The paradoxical nature of the whole situation is illustrated by the fact
that these people had been defending their settlements against attack by Arab
bands who had no legal status, and by soldiers of the Arab Legion under British
command at a time when the Legion was still part of the British security
forces and responsible for maintaining law and order.

CHAPTER XV

OPERATION DELUGE

Security chaos and administrative vacuum Palestine
expelled from the Sterling Block The vanishing of the
Government's assets The closing down of the oil re-
fineries Railways, shipping, air transport and postal
services cease to function Operation Deluge completed.

The Jews build their skeleton Government The
flood and the Ark Formation of the Provisional State
Council The Proclamation of Independence.

Gotterdammerung in Palestine *' Here goes thirty
years, gentlemen " Increasing demoralization and cor-
ruption Aspirins and tanks for sale Mosleyites at
work The flood of evil

I

THE British Government's refusal to hand over the administration
to any local bodies, and to legalize some form of militia which
could exercise authority, was designed to create both a state of
chaos in matters of physical security and an administrative vacuum
in the country.

As regards physical security, the successive evacuation by
British troops of towns and rural areas of mixed population without
passing on to anybody legal or factual control was inevitably
followed by civil war in the town or area in question be it
Haifa, Safed or the plain south-west of Afula. The withdrawal
of each British garrison created a local vacuum into which both
parties rushed their improvised para-military troops to grab
possession of it. The whole plan and manner of execution of this
unprecedented abandonment of a country, after a long period of
international trusteeship, with no authorized security forces in
any area, 1 could produce no other foreseeable result than to set
that country, and ipso facto the whole Middle East, " aflame ".

1 The only exceptions made were the authorization at the beginning of
December of Arab and Jewish police in the Jaffa and Tel Aviv areas respectively,
and the handing over of control over the Old City of Jerusalem to the Arabs.

164 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The piecemeal withdrawal of the British troops from successive
areas in Palestine began in January and was virtually terminated
by May 15, the date when the Mandate was relinquished and the
Administration closed down. From May 15 onwards only an
insignificant number of troops remained in small enclaves in and
around Haifa, waiting for transport, and observing an attitude of
scrupulous non-interference in the war raging around them.

Parallel with the withdrawal of the troops proceeded the wind-
ing up of the civilian Administration. The melancholy process
of closing down one public service after another, and of progress-
ively cutting off the country from all traffic with the outside world,
struck its citizens like a methodic preparation for Doomsday or
the arrival of the Comet. To make its intentions unmistakeably
clear, the British Government repeatedly refused the United
Nations Palestine Commission's request to be allowed to proceed
to Palestine and prepare for assuring the continuity of the
Administration on May 15. It was precisely this continuity which
the British Government was determined to avoid, as the following
statements will illustrate.

On November 21 Sir Alexander Cadogan had rejected the
Partition Sub-Committee's proposal for a United Nations' transi-
tion regime because

" it would create a division of authority between Britain and
the U.N., which in turn would create confusion and disorder
[sic] and have disastrous consequences. So long as my Govern-
ment will continue to hold the Mandate for Palestine, they must
insist upon their undivided control of that country."

On December 12 the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Creech Jones,
stated in the Commons :

" Britain has made it clear that as she could not take part in
implementing the U.N. plan, it would be undesirable for the
Commission to arrive in Palestine until a short period before
the termination of the Mandate. For reasons of administrative
efficiency and security [sic] the overlapping period should be
comparatively brief."

On January 30 the British delegate at the United States
Partition Commission categorically rejected the Commission's
request for the creation of Arab and Jewish militias to ensure
security at the termination of the Mandate, and at the same time

OPERATION DELUGE 165

stated that the British Government could not authorize the arrival
of the United Nations Commission in Palestine at a date earlier
than May i that is, just a fortnight before the termination of
the Mandate.

On February 3 the United Nations Commission once more
approached the British Government with a request to be per-
mitted to proceed earlier to Palestine ; the request was once again
rejected.

On February n the British delegate at U.N.O. stated that
Arab infiltrators from neighbouring countries were exercising
" considerable administrative control " in Samaria, while Mr.
Bevin stated in the Commons that his policy had not yet been
proved unsuccessful in Palestine. " It is not yet over," he
declared, somewhat ominously.

On February 18 Mr. Creech Jones declared in the Commons
that Britain was unable to concur with the United Nations'
suggestion to open a port in Palestine for Jewish immigrants :
" Thanks to British influence, the Arabs had shown considerable
restraint l [sic], but if a port were opened this restraint would
disappear". He reiterated that Britain could not allow the
United Nations Commission to enter Palestine before May i,
" as this was certain to bring about Arab demonstrations ". He
also added, yet once again, that Britain was determined to maintain
" full and undivided authority for security in Palestine up to
May 15 ".

One of the members of the United Nations Commission
summed up the situation in the laconic remark : " They have
created a vacuum and refuse to hand it over."

And yet only two months earlier, on December u, 1947, the
British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Creech Jones, had
solemnly stated : " The decision of the Assembly is regarded by
His Majesty's Government as a court of international opinion.
This is not a grudging acceptance ... we wish our authority
transferred to our successors in an orderly manner."

1 The total number of casualties (British, Arabs and Jews) had already
amounted three weeks earlier to 869 killed and round 2000 wounded. These
figures, published by the British delegation at Lake Success on February i,
covered only the two months* period since December i, 1947.

By April 3, 1948, the total number of casualties listed by the United Nations
Commission had risen to 6187 killed and wounded, Arab and Jewish casualties
being roughly equal. The number of British casualties at the same date
was 430.

l66 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

On February 22, 1948, Palestine was at short notice expulsed
from the Sterling Block. Palestine Jews who had followed the
patriotic slogan " Save for Victory " woke up one morning to
find that their savings invested in Bearer Bonds and Postal Savings
Certificates were frozen in far-off England, and would be inaccess-
ible probably for years to come. The Palestine Government's
assets, which, thanks to the country's previous prosperity, had
amounted at the end of the fiscal year 1946-47 to over eleven
million pounds, shrank rapidly ; for the first time the Govern-
ment's budget showed a deficit, amounting to five million pounds,
in the quarter October-December 1947. Last-minute grants to
Moslem " religious funds " administered by the Mufti's Higher
Arab Committee, and the debiting of the budget by such items as
2,000,000 for the " maintenance of the Cyprus camps for Jewish
deportees ", helped to squander away the assets accumulated
mainly through the contributions of Jewish taxpayers ; what
remained of them on Doomsday was again frozen in England,

The oil refineries, run by the British-owned Consolidated
Refineries Ltd., closed down in mid- April. Palestine was entirely
dependent on them for her petrol supply, which amounted to
12 per cent of the output of these refineries. They received about
half of their crude oil through the pipeline from Kirkuk, the other
half by tankers from abroad. From now on the Company's tankers
were employed in the opposite traffic : the existing stocks of crude
oil were removed to Tripoli, the refined petrol to Beirut ; the
flow from the pipeline was simultaneously diverted to Amman.
True to her interpretation of neutrality in the conflict, Great
Britain not only continued to deliver arms to Iraq and Trans-
jordan, but also made sure that their armies should be well
supplied with fuel ; while the Jews saw an arms embargo enforced
upon them and their motor transport left high and dry. The
Jewish Government's request that the refineries should be re-
opened after the truce came into force was rejected under the
pretext that there was " not enough Arab skilled labour available
in Israel ".'

In March all British shipping lines were ordered not to touch

1 The refineries were reopened by decree of the Israeli Government a
few weeks later, and seemed to get along all right with only Jewish skilled
labour.

OPERATION DELUGE 167

in future any Palestine port. At about the same time the Palestine
Government refused to grant or to renew licences for the import
of goods into Palestine including agricultural machinery, build-
ing materials, books and newspapers. Gradually, step by step,
Palestine was isolated from the outside world. Its food supplies
depended to a large extent on allocations from the Combined
Food Board and the International Emergency Food Council, and
formed part of Great Britain's bulk allocations. The Government
made no provisions to assure the continuity of these allocations,
or to enable the Jews to lay in stocks, which were the more needed
as supplies from the neighbouring Arab countries had naturally
stopped. The result of this was an inflationary deluge as part of
the general picture.

Next came the throttling of air traffic, the paralysing of the
railways, the cutting of postal and telegraph communications.
Lydda airport, the only one which had facilities for the landing
of the four-engined overseas passenger craft used by the big
airlines, such as B.O.A.C. and T.W.A., was closed down on
April 25. The first notice of warning that no through tickets to
neighbouring countries would be issued by the Palestine Railways
from the end of that month appeared on February 26 ; from then
onward travel to the neighbouring countries, and later on internal
travel, were gradually discontinued as the railway administration
wound up. On April 14 the Press published a report of the
United Nations Palestine Commission at Lake Success, according
to which preparatory steps to continue essential services had been
taken by that Commission. On the same day the Palestine
Government announced its schedule for the suspension of postal
services, " in the absence of any communication from the U.N.
Palestine Commission providing for acceptance of responsibility
for the continuation of the services ". Surface mail to and from
Palestine was accordingly discontinued in April, air mail in the
first days of May. At the same date Palestine was excluded from
the International Postal Federation.

When Sir Alan Cunningham, the last British High Com-
missioner, sailed from Haifa on May 14, he left, behind him a
country without legal government, administration, police or
public services, cut off from the outside world and ravaged by
war. Operation Deluge was completed.

l68 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

3

We have reported before how the power vacuum created by
the withdrawal of the British security forces was filled in by the
successful operations of Haganah, which resulted in the entire
territory of the future State being safely under its control by
May 15. Parallel to these military operations, the Jewish Agency
proceeded to neutralize the administrative vacuum by building up
the skeleton of a government and civilian administration.

This task was, on the one hand, made easier by the adminis-
trative experience gained under the British Mandate when the
Jewish Agency had already functioned as a State within the State,
running its own schools, hospitals, and a number of other public
services. But this advantage was counterbalanced by the pre-
vailing conditions of civil war. Jerusalem, headquarters of the
Jewish Agency, and of the main Jewish institutions and archives,
was cut off most of the time from Tel Aviv. Convoys were rare,
and travel on them entailed risk of life. The only other means of
communication between the ancient and the future capital was
a set of short-wave transmitters and a tiny two-seater training
plane, property of the Jewish Agency, which performed perilous
hops from an improvised dirt-track runway in Jerusalem to Tel
Aviv and back, with one shaky passenger on board. When
Israel's first Government was constituted in Tel Aviv on May 14,
the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Yitzchak Greenbaum, was stuck
in Jerusalem and could not join the Cabinet for several weeks
because each time he wanted to board the tiny plane in Jerusalem
some Haganah officer on essential duty was given priority
over him.

It is against this background that the building up of the new
State has to be pictured. The floods were closing in from all
sides ; if the Jews of Palestine were to survive as a nation they
had to improvise a new Ark and ride against the tides. On
January 12 a spokesman of the Jewish Agency told the Press
that " the entire plan for the structure of the Jewish State, from
the preparation of ministries down to the number of Hebrew and
Arabic typewriters necessary, will be ready by the end of this
month. The work has been under way since November 29."

The main steps towards the establishment of the new State
may be summarized as follows :

On January 19 the chairman of the Jewish National Service

OPERATION DELUGE 169

Census Board reported that 72 per cent of the young men in the
age-groups from 17 to 25 had registered for " national service " ;
of the remaining 28 per cent the majority was already otherwise
engaged that is, had gone underground.

On February 17, in the first notice of this kind to appear in
the Press, the Jewish Agency advertised for " Candidates required
to undergo a course of training as officers in the Police Force of the
Jewish State. Command of either Hebrew or Arabic is essential."

On February 27 the Jewish Agency imposed a ban on foreign
travel for all Jews between 16 and 40, " who are liable for national
service". At the end of February the Hebrew trade unions
published a comprehensive scheme for social security legislation
in the future State. On March i the Vaad Leumi * met in Tel
Aviv and decided on the broad outline of the composition of the
Jewish Provisional Government Council, which was to be " re-
sponsible for the forging of the instruments of the local and
central Governments. Representatives of Arab communities
adhering to the U.N. decision would also be co-opted to the
Council." On March 9 the composition of this Council took
definite shape ; it was to be composed of 12 members of the
Jewish Agency Executive, 14 members of the Vaad Leumi
Executive, and 6 of parties not represented on either Executive.
In addition, it was stated that " negotiations had started for
the setting up of a smaller executive body to act more or less on
the lines of a Cabinet ". The offer to Arabs to participate in the
Provisional Council was repeated, and the spokesman of the
Jewish Agency emphasized that " this was not a platonic offer ".

On March 21 the Jewish Agency Executive decided that the
Provisional Jewish Government would begin to function on
May 1 6. On March 31 the Press reported that "hundreds of
Jewish men and women were being trained to take over the
postal services after the termination of the Mandate ". On April 2
the Jewish National Census Board announced a call-up of all
Palestinian Jews abroad. On April n the Jewish Agency and
Vaad Leumi announced the creation of a Jewish State Fund
which was to start immediately collecting income-tax from the
future citizens of the future State. On the next day the Zionist
General Council, which was in session in Tel Aviv, resolved " that
upon the termination of the Mandatory regime there shall be an
end of foreign rule in Palestine, and that the Governing Body of
1 Jewish National Council.

170 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

the Jewish State shall come into being " ; it endorsed the pro-
posed agreement between Haganah and Irgun, and decided to
launch a Jewish National Loan. On April 19 the Jewish Agency
and Vaad Leumi issued an order to all Jewish Government
employees to remain at their posts after the termination of the
Mandate.

On May 14 the Provisional Council, which had changed its
name into " Provisional State Council ", met in solemn session in
Tel Aviv, elected a Provisional Government of thirteen members,
and proclaimed the independence of the new State, " whose name
shall be Israel ".

4

The Gotterdammerung of British rule in the Holy Land was
not in the Wagnerian, but rather in the Dostoievskian style.

In a statement to the foreign Press on October 8, 1947,
Britain's last High Commissioner, in answer to a question, had
said that it would be " physically possible for Britain to go, leaving
nothing to replace her in Palestine ". But it would be, he warned,
at the expense of " misery, distress and chaos ' '. Sir Alan Cunning-
ham could not foresee at the time that it would become his tragic
duty to carry out the policy against which he had warned, and to
create the conditions which he had predicted " misery, distress
and chaos ".

Equally tragic was the situation of a number of men in the
higher and medium ranks of the Administration, who, whatever
their bias, had honestly laboured for many years to build up a
structure which they were now called upon to destroy. A few of
them had been caught by the imaginative appeal of the Jewish
pioneering effort ; the majority was emotionally anti- Jewish and
pro- Arab but all of them had come one way or another to
identify themselves with the country for whose best they had
worked according to their lights ; and none of them had foreseen
or desired this dismal and humiliating end. They had to leave
without farewell, boycotted by their friends in both camps, hated
by both. They could not even, in sincerity, reproach them with
ingratitude. The 300,000 Arab refugees in the olive groves, the
Jews assailed by armies commanded or equipped by Britain, were
the undivided responsibility of the Government whose orders the
men in the Administration obeyed.

Characteristic of the general atmosphere of doom was an

OPERATION DELUGE

incident which occurred during an inter-departmental meeting of
high-ranking British Civil Servants. The agenda of the meeting,
as of all similar conferences at the time, was " the winding up of
the Administration ". In the middle of the conference one of the
leading officials, who had seen nearly a quarter-century of service
in the country, was seized by a crying fit. He kept repeating the
mumbled words : " Here goes thirty years, gentlemen, thirty
years. . . ."

In the less reputable layers of the Administration, and par-
ticularly in the Police, no such heart-searchings prevailed. To
carry out an elaborate task of destruction has inevitably a de-
structive effect on morale ; and to be garrisoned in a country
where one is despised by the population aggravates this effect.
The abandoned camps and billets of British troops all over
Palestine looked like a panorama of the Sack of Rome, where
smashed furniture and broken glass mingled with electric wires
and gutted pipes. Thousands of lorries, jeeps and motor-cars,
which the authorities could not evacuate or sell to the Arabs, and
which they refused to sell to the Jews, lay as gigantic heaps of
twisted metal and burnt rubber in deserted car parks all over the
country ; the total area of these motor cemeteries must have
covered scores of acres. Such senseless destruction goes against
human instinct ; hence it is only natural that soldiers, N.C.O.s
and officers of the departing army vied in appropriating con-
demned equipment and selling it to the highest bidder, whether
Arab or Jew. Thus Operation Deluge produced, among other
phenomena, a black market in British arms and equipment the
like of which has rarely been seen in history, and where the
purchasing agents of both parties could buy anything from a kilo
of aspirin to a 4-ton lorry loaded with kit-bags, as well as radio
equipment, jeeps, light field-artillery pieces and even Churchill
tanks. It was only human that these properties of the Crown,
condemned, to be smashed, burnt or dumped into the sea, should
be put to some better use by being converted into a gift for
somebody at home, or into a suburban plot for a retired soldier.
But it was not an edifying spectacle, and it led to a general de-
moralization and corruption rare among British troops ; having
lost the sympathy of the population, they now lost its respect.
It was a melancholy exit, and an undeserved punishment which,
as is the rule, smote not the head but the arm which protects it.

Even more distressing was the gradual demoralization in the

172 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Police. The symbiosis of evil in the poisoned atmosphere brought
certain disreputable elements in its ranks former Mosleyites
and Black and Tan veterans increasingly to the fore towards
the end. The lurid circumstances of the Farran case have already
been recorded ; they revealed the existence of a Fascist counter-
terror caucus within the Police for which the fight against the
Jewish resistance movement became a pretext for committing
outrages on a par with those of Irgun and the Stern Group. On
February i the building of the Palestine Post in Jerusalem was
destroyed by an explosion ; on the 22nd of the same month an
explosion In Ben Yehuda Street/ the main shopping centre of
Jewish Jerusalem, wrecked several buildings, killed fifty-two people
and injured over a hundred. In both cases the enquiries instigated
by the Government produced no result; the parallel Enquiry
Reports of a committee set up by the Jewish Agency named
British Police personnel as the perpetrators, and in both cases
Arab spokesmen denied having anything to do with the bombings.
Responsibility for the second outrage (and by inference for the
first) was claimed by the " British League Palestine Branch ",
an offspring of Mosley's " British League of Ex-Servicemen ", in
a circular letter sent to a number of British residents in Jerusalem,
the text of which, together with a comment broadcast over
Haganah's illegal radio station on March 3, appears in the
footnote, 1

Similar influences seemed to be at work within limited groups
of the Army. On February 12, for instance, four Haganah men
were arrested by an Army patrol, turned loose in the Arab quarter
of the Old City near St. Stephen's Gate, and found there three
hours later murdered and mutilated. On February 29 British

1 " THE BRITISH LEAGUE (PALESTINE BRANCH)

" ' Our aim must be to subjugate the World and become its sole Masters
by demoralising all hostile Gentiles * (from Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
page 63). Thus the vile Jew, backed by International Free Masonry, supported
by international Communism and with the help of international Finance, strode
into the aoth century. Under the cloak of Zionist ideals, but in reality for the
purpose of creating a centre for international intrigue, he claimed the establish-
ment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Now Jewish guile was discarded ;
no sooner did he feel safely entrenched in Palestine, than his aggressive impulses
and ambitions were revealed. With systematic perseverance he acquired the
power and the means to dominate the rightful owners of Palestine. But the
noble Arab arose at last to fight the unscrupulous enemy. In this hour of their
trial, the Arabs will not be alone. We, the British League of Servicemen and
Ex-Servicemen, pledge our full support to the chivalrous sons of Araby, who

OPERATION DELUGE 173

troops disarmed the personnel of a small Jewish factory on the
Jaffa-Tel Aviv border and turned them over to an Arab mob,
who killed nine Jews on the spot. A subsequent Government
enquiry into the first case stated that

" although the Company Sergeant Major (in charge of the four
murdered Jews) was guilty of an error of judgment in not handing
his prisoners over to the Police, for which suitable action has
been taken by the military authorities it has been clearly
established that he released them with their arms at a point
where, being on the edge of a Jewish area, he assumed that the
four were in no danger ".

The error of judgment of a Company Sergeant-Major who arrests
people behind the Jewish lines, puts them on a truck and, instead
of handing them over to his superiors, releases them " with their
arms " in Arab territory u on the edge " of a Jewish area may
have been due to an unusual chain of coincidences, but this did
not sound plausible in the middle of a civil war ; the vileness of
the incident shook Jewish trust in the fairness politics apart
of the British Army more than other events on a much larger scale.

have come to liberate their country from the yoke of the Wandering Jew. AH
of us will join this fight : from the highest to the lowest of Britain's Imperial
representatives.

" Not words alone will help to win

This noble fight against the Jew ;
'Tis deeds which count and gelignite,

And brave determined guns !

" In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the site where our Lord Christ
was crucified by the impenitent ancestors of those very Jews who now aspire
to mastery of this country, members of the British League took a sacred vow,
dedicating themselves to a Crusade against the Jews. Accordingly, on 22nd
February 1948, we attacked the central Jewish quarter of Jerusalem with high
explosives, inflicting heavy casualties on the guttersnipes ; over 100 killed and
200 injured all Jews ! We take pride in announcing that no distinction was
made by us between the cowardly, treacherous Hagana gangsters and the
murderous Sternists. Jewish women and children, old and young, they will
all be annihilated. We will finish Hitler's job !

" Nations of the World, arise and smite the Jews ! Arabs, unite and
liberate your country ! Britons, awake and drive out the Jewish-dominated
Labour Government! British soldiers and policemen, join the British League!
Rule Britannia!

" THE BRITISH LEAGUE (PALESTINE BRANCH)

February 1948."

Haganah Comment: The following statement was made by the Haganah
commentator after the reading of the above circular : ** We do not believe that
all Britons uphold the * lofty * ideas of the League. We know that the Fascists
are a minority of the British people, and also of the Britons here in Palestine.
But we cannot ignore the presence of such a minority in our midst."

174 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

For the first time the Jewish Agency in an official statement
permitted itself " to place it on record that in this instance it
makes a definite charge of murder ", while the Haganah Com-
mander in Jerusalem ordered, after referring to the incident, " all
members of the Haganah in Jerusalem from now on to resist with
arms any attempt by British forces to search for weapons or to
make arrests ".

Again it must be said that after the King David outrage, with
its ninety-one victims, after the blowing up of troop trains and the
assassination of British soldiers and policemen from ambush
and sometimes in their sleep by members of the Stern Group,
it was only human that groups of men in the Police and Army
conspired to retaliate against the Jews, an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth. But this had no longer anything to do with the
maintenance of law and order ; it was a surrender to the flood of
moral evil which Operation Deluge had brought over the Holy
Land.

CHAPTER XVI

FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN

India compared to Palestine " It's either them or us "
The five choices before the Labour Government
Palestine the Seventh Dominion The missed opportun-
ity of 1 945 The capitulation of common sense.

Samson among the Philistines The climate of public
opinion Its rejection of totalitarian measures The
buffers of democracy and the boons of the lesser evil

WHEN the British withdrew from India after handing over power
to the Moslem and Hindu Governments, they knew that whatever
the rights and wrongs of the past they left that country under the
relatively most favourable conditions which careful constructive
planning could devise, and that if the future was nevertheless to
bring more bloodshed, it was not of their design and making. In
Palestine the exact opposite was the case. Thirty years of labour
were deliberately and wantonly undone within a few months. It
was the capitulation of British common sense before emotional
conviction and traditional prejudice, resulting in a policy which
Mr. Ernest Bevin, supported by a coterie of permanent officials,
had succeeded in imposing on the Cabinet.

Irrational emotive behaviour always leans towards extremes
(though sometimes it may take the form of extreme hesitancy).
If asked to account for his conduct, the subject will rationalize
his motives by explaining that he had no other choice, all middle
roads having been blocked by circumstances. He lives in a
schematized world, and his schematized reasoning makes him
constantly go off at a tangent. When asked by a friend about the
reasons for his stubborn and uncompromising refusal to let the
refugees from the D.P. camps enter Palestine, Mr. Ernest Bevin
is reported to have answered with profound conviction : " My
dear boy, it's either them or us ". " Them ** referred to the Jews
in Palestine ; ** us " referred to the British Commonwealth of
Nations.

175

176 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The real choice before the Labour Government was of course
neither between " them and us ", nor between an extreme pro-
Arab or pro-Jewish policy, but between a series of possible
compromise solutions. A full implementation of Labour's avowed
programme the transformation of the whole of Palestine into
a Jewish State could, in the light of later events, have been
carried out without much difficulty by simply standing by while
Haganah took over. But to let the Jews take over while they were
in a minority would have been a flagrant breach of all democratic
principles ; and to wait until the Jews became a majority through
immigration would have meant continuation of a mandate which
had already become practically unworkable.

The third possibility was Partition, proposed by the Royal
Commission as long as ten years ago, adopted by the United
Nations Assembly, and in fact the only workable solution which,
moreover, was in accord with the classic traditions of British
compromise. It was rejected by Mr. Bevin and enforced by the
logic of history, at the price of entirely unnecessary bloodshed,
destruction, and loss of British prestige. The Jewish State, for
which Britain had laid the foundations in 1917, was ultimately
inaugurated against Britain's will.

It would have been both logical and easy for Britain to act as
godfather to the new State. Despite all bitterness, the memories
of Balfour were never quite erased. To the very last moment the
majority of the Jews hoped that the Labour Government would
come back to its senses and that Israel would be allowed to become
England's natural ally in the Middle East, united to her by ties
of tradition and mutual interest. As early as 1925 Lord Wedgwood
had launched the idea of Israel as the Seventh Dominion in the
British Commonwealth of Nations. All arguments of humanity
and expediency spoke in favour of it. This commonwealth of
immigrants would have become a beachhead of European tradition
and democracy in the Levant ; a highly industrialized, compact
outpost against totalitarian expansion, German or Russian. The
airfields and strategic bases which the Western Powers needed at
this Clapham Junction of the Orient could be had from the Jews
for the asking it was in the Jews* own interest to have them
there. England and France had been gradually edged out of
Egypt, Syria and the Lebanon by the hostile pressure of Arab
xenophobia ; here it would have been possible to establish a solid
base in the proximity of the Suez Canal, controlling the approaches

FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN 177

to the Levant, with a European population as a friendly hinterland.
This would not have been an imperialist policy there was
no question of exploiting the Jewish natives, or of using them as a
springboard for expansionist conquests. Nor did it mean " play-
ing the Jewish card against the Arabs ". Neither Egypt nor Syria
and the Lebanon, Palestine's neighbours to the south and north,
had any claim or standing in its problems. To the east, Trans-
jordan's Emir, later King, Abdullah, had always been on par-
ticularly friendly terms with the Jews, and had never hidden his
eagerness to unite the Arab part of Palestine with his kingdom,
while leaving the Jewish part to the Jews. It was not merely the
question of a political deal, but a genuine desire on the part of
Transjordan's ruler, and the handful of educated men around him,
to profit from the presence of the Jews to modernize his country.
On his initiative, Palestine Jews built the electric power station
and grid in his capital, Amman. Negotiations for other Jewish
concessions and pioneering enterprises in the vast deserts of
Transjordan (whose total, and mainly nomadic, population
numbers only 300,000) had been going on all the time until
the White Paper of 1939 made it clear to the Arabs that Britain
disapproved of the presence of Jews in Palestine. Even so,
contacts between King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency were
continued right until the outbreak of hostilities paradoxically
enough against the wishes, and behind the backs, of the British
diplomatic representatives in Transjordan. And finally, Abdul-
lah's Government was the first to enter into peace negotiations
with Israel against the protests of his unwelcome allies in the
Arab League. Had British diplomacy not created this phantom
body, and dragged Egypt, Syria and the rest into the Palestine
issue, Jews and Arabs on both sides of the Jordan would have
partitioned the country peacefully between themselves some ten
years ago. They would, moreover, in all likelihood have worked
out some form of economic federation, connected to the framework
of the Commonwealth by elastic but solid ties. 1

1 Without going into the details of Arab politics, it should be noted that
Transjordan was and is as interested in a solution on these lines as the Jews,
in view of the age-old rivalry between the Hashimite and Saudite dynasties, the
religious antagonism between its Sunnite tribes and the Wahhabis of the penin-
sula ; and that the hostility between Egypt and Transjordan is not less marked.
Only to the distant European does the Arab world appear homogeneous ; in
Pact, Saudi Arabia and the Lebanon are countries as different in cultural, social
and economic structure as, say, Bulgaria and France.

N

178 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The fellaheen in Palestine would have accepted this solution,
as they had accepted the transition from Turkish to British rule,
with feelings ranging from indifference to relief. The amorphous
character of the Arab masses in Palestine, and their lack of national
consciousness, has been described in an earlier chapter ; it was
confirmed by their complete apathy and unwillingness to fight.
Although superior in numbers and, thanks to the neighbouring
Arab countries, in an incomparably more favourable position for
obtaining arms than the Jews, they simply emigrated en masse
and left the fighting to be done by mercenaries and foreign armies.
If Partition based on an agreement between Abdullah and the
Jews had been imposed, the greater part of the Arabs within the
boundaries of the Jewish State would probably have preferred to
remain there ; the rest could have been transferred in an orderly
manner to the Arab kingdom of Palestine, instead of losing their
goods and chattels in panicky flight.

The only forces opposed to this solution were the Mufti and
the effendis of the Husseini party, with the village priests who
owed allegiance to them. Their solution, stated almost in so
many words in the Mufti's testimony to the Royal Commission,
was to drown the Jews in the sea ; their policy was alliance with
the Axis; their social programme mediaeval feudalism. They
had preached death to Zionism and sold their land to the Jews ;
they had preached the Holy War, and when the showdown came
were the first to sneak away to Beirut and Cairo, leaving the
helpless masses in the lurch. For thirty years Britain had
appeased the Mufti, claiming that there was no other way ; a
week after the Jericho Conference had proclaimed Abdullah
ruler of Arab Palestine, 1 he dismissed the Mufti and appointed
a new one in his stead.

When the Labour Government took power in July 1945 ^ e
situation was particularly propitious for carrying out Partition
in a bloodless operation. The Husseini clan had backed the
wrong horse and felt its position tottering. The Mufti was wanted
as a war criminal. The Labour victory meant that a Party had
taken power which was committed " to put an end to the rule
of the corrupt effendi class ", to abolish the White Paper, and to
promote unfettered Jewish immigration " in such numbers that
they should become a majority ". In these circumstances, had
the Labour Party changed its policy from one hundred per cent
1 In December 1948.

FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN 179

Zionist support to the compromise of Partition, the moderate
Arab leaders would have regarded this as a gift from heaven ;
and after some oratory about " fighting to the last drop of blood ",
and arranging for the reasonable amount of rioting which is de
rigueur, would have accepted the solution imposed " by brute
force " with quiet realism, convinced that they had successfully
diddled a British Government which had promised the whole of
Palestine to the Jews. Never in the history of Palestine, since the
beginning of the Mandate, was a more favourable opportunity
offered to a British Government for a peaceful solution than at
the time when Labour came to power after the victorious termina-
tion of the war.

Partition, then, was the third alternative choice before the
Cabinet the first, as will be remembered, was the full imple-
mentation of Labour's Palestine programme ; the second, continua-
tion of the Mandate on the pre-White Paper basis.

The fourth solution was neither full support for Zionism nor
Partition, but merely the admission of the 100,000 Jewish D.P.s
recommended by President Truman, the Anglo-American Com-
mittee and the elementary demands of humanity. This fourth
alternative, already three steps down, as it were, from the official
Labour platform, was equally rejected.

The fifth alternative presented itself when Great Britain, after
having appointed a Royal Commission and rejected its recom-
mendations, having appointed an Anglo-American Committee and
rejected its recommendations, finally took the matter before the
United Nations. U.N.O. appointed yet another Commission,
whose recommendations were endorsed by the General Assembly ;
and once again Britain declined to carry them out, or even to
collaborate in their implementation.

The irrationality of this obstinate refusal to accept any com-
promise solution was matched by the absurdity of mobilizing
British warships, airborne divisions and diplomatic machinery to
prevent a few thousand wretched D.P.s from getting into Palestine.
This policy was doggedly maintained to the very last day of the
Mandate, when neither security reasons nor the shortage of food,
nor even the danger of " the Middle East going up in flames ",
could any longer be invoked for its justification the Middle
East being already as much aflame as it ever can be when six Arab

l8o PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

countries breathe fire, brimstone and Holy War.

That this policy could not be explained in terms of logical
reasoning and expediency became gradually apparent in a series
of symptomatic incidents which revealed the irrational emotions
at work. Such symptoms were, firstly, certain passages in Mr.
Bevin's speeches which were either simply untrue, like the story
about the two hundred million pounds ; l or grossly insulting,
like the jibe about America being so keen on dumping Jews in
Palestine because she wanted to avoid having them in New
York ; 2 or revealingly emotional, like the " staking of his political
future on Palestine ". 3 The unconscious source of these outbursts
was the conviction that " it's either them or us ". The derogatory
tendency towards the Jews was underlined by insinuations about
the motives of America's interest in them, and stood in con-
spicuous contrast to the eulogies of " the generosity of our Arab
friends " 4 and to reminders that " the Arabs should not be taken
for nobody or nothing ".

Other revealing incidents which could not be explained by any
rational motives were the deportation of the refugees on the
Exodus 1947, not to Cyprus, but to Germany, the very scene of
the nightmare which they were trying to escape ; and the con-
tinued detention of some 12,000 Jewish D.P.s in Cyprus half a
year after Britain had relinquished her Mandate over Palestine,
and with it her right to decide who should or should not be
allowed to enter that country. While the Mandate was still in
force the legal grounds for detaining these people had been that
they were illegal immigrants intercepted on their way to Palestine ;
from June 1 1 to July 9 the justification for their detention was
that their arrival would upset the truce ; when the United Nations
Mediator ruled that there was no objection to their being allowed
to proceed to Palestine, the British authorities in Cyprus passed
a special law designed to make their continued detention possible
with an appearance of legality. It should be remembered that
the only legal offence of which these people had been guilty was
that, after the destruction of their relatives, friends and possessions,
they had committed the imprudence of embarking for a country
which they regarded as theirs ; and which has since become it.
It is futile to search for rational causes when faced with acts

1 Statement at the Party Conference at Bournemouth, June 12, 1946.

* Ibid.

3 Statement at Press Conference, November 13, 1945. 4 Ibid.

FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN l8l

of an irrationally vindictive character. How indeed could the
continued detention of these human wrecks under abstruse legal
pretexts be logically connected with oil policy, the Soviet menace,
strategy, morality, expediency or what have you ? It is a puzzle
with a simple psychological solution. In his first statement on
Palestine Mr. Bevin had warned the Jews not to try to get to the
head of the queue ; in his last act of immigration policy he made
sure that they should remain at the tail of the queue. The sub-
conscious layers of the mind have their own logic and wry humour.

3

Like Samson, bringing down the temple over his head to
destroy the assembled Philistines, so Mr. Bevin, in his determina-
tion to destroy Zionism, made Britain's Arab policy collapse into
ruins. Some of the circumstances which enabled the Foreign
Secretary and a small group of men sharing the same convictions
to impose their will on Government, Party and country have
already been discussed in previous chapters ; a few relevant facts
have to be added to complete the picture.

The External Affairs Committee of the Labour Party had
given its enthusiastic approval to the Anglo-American Committee's
report, and had urged its immediate adoption. And yet a few
weeks later the Bournemouth Party Conference, in June 1946,
had again ended in a spectacular triumph for the man whom the
rank and file acclaimed as " Our Ernie ". Once more the popular,
matey trade-union boss proved to carry incomparably more weight
than any of the Party's " intellectuals ". However strongly some
of his colleagues in the Cabinet ridiculed and resented his Palestine
obsession and some of them made no secret of this in private
conversation they knew that if they forced a showdown they
would inevitably be the losers. There was occasionally a muttered
threat of resignation, but there the matter ended. Ernest Bevin's
ascent to the position of a benevolent despot in the Party repeated
a pattern only too well known in the history of the Socialist
Movement.

However, the weight of his personality and the support he
commanded would probably not have sufficed to reverse the
Party's attitude and programme had not the Jews been rapidly
losing sympathy with British public opinion as a consequence of
the terrorists' outrages. This trend was exploited and accelerated

182 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

by the Press (with a very few notable exceptions) in a campaign
partly Government-inspired, and partly carried by ever-latent
anti-Semitic currents. The problems involved in the Palestine
issue were too complex to be judged on their merit by the house-
wife-in-the-street ; the unctuous self-righteousness of Zionist
propaganda left her cold ; but Mr. Bevin's homely jokes about
the Jews found an archetypal echo in the masses. How rapidly
this proverbially tolerant people had become transformed into
the most anti-Semitic nation of the West became evident when a
crowd of thousands thronged to the Liverpool docks to welcome
an ex-officer of the Palestine Police, freshly acquitted of the charge
of beating to death a Jewish boy of 16.

So we have come back to our starting-point, the importance
of subconscious psychological processes, of the subjective factor
in history. British policy in Palestine is not a tale of diabolic
scheming ; it is a case-history for the psychologist.

It is of course possible that our " psycho-somatic " view of
history is mistaken, and that the whole chain of events, from the
Struma to the I5th of May, was the result of a conscious, calcu-
lated, machiavellian policy, dictated by reasons unknown to this
writer or to any other student of the problem. In this case the
diabolic conception of the nature of British policy as described
by Soviet propagandists and by some sections of the American
Press would be the correct one. This writer believes the
analysis of events presented here to be nearer the truth though
of course this conviction, too, may be emotionally biassed. For it is
based on the axiomatic belief that there are more fools than knaves
on this earth, whether in Whitechapel or Whitehall.

4

Two Englishmen have done more than any other to bring
about the rebirth of Israel : Lord Balfour and Ernest Bevin. The
first gave the Jews their legal charter; the second, by refusing
any compromise, forced them to fight it out and thus pass the
test of nationhood.

There is a thread running through this history which one takes
so much for granted that its importance is seldom recognized.
Neither Balfour nor Bevin could fully realize their respective aims.
The cumbersome machinery of democracy with its parliamentary
valves and administrative brakes, prevented, for good or evil, the

FROM BALFOUR TO BEVIN 183

total execution of the idea. Only despots, ancient and modern,
are able to say : " there shall be a Jewish State ", or " there shall
be none " ; " there shall be a Crimean Republic ", or " it shall
be erased " ; " this nation shall be exalted, that other cremated ".
The elastic buffers of tradition and routine which absorbed the
impulse of Balfour's vision neutralized the effects of Bevin's
obsession*

When, after June 29, 1946, it became evident that Jewish
resistance could not be broken short of totalitarian measures, the
Government stopped short of them and thereby lost the game.
At any time between that day and the termination of the Mandate,
Tel Aviv could have been bombed into submission, the settlements
wiped out, and the three-quarters of a million Palestine Jews
rendered as helpless as, say, the population of Lithuania under
Russian rule. During the civil war period, when Haganah came
out into the open, British non-intervention indirectly favoured
the Arabs ; but the direct intervention of a single mechanized
division would have decided the issue against the Jews. When
the invasion from the neighbouring countries started, the Govern-
ment favoured the invaders by the continued delivery of arms,
by the diversion of oil supplies, by using the Arab Legion to
make war on the Jews, while Britain herself remained officially
neutral. It was a revolting hypocrisy, but the very necessity of
being hypocritical about it, of using indirect, back-door means, is
proof that Parliament and public opinion would not have stood for
more direct measures. Even at that stage the intervention of a
few British divisions or R. A.F. bomber squadrons would have put
an end to all Israel's hopes.

Mr. Bevin and his consorts did everything in their power to
prevent the Jewish State coming into being ; but the point is that
their powers were limited by democratic control and the climate
of opinion. This climate was hostile to the Jews but would never
allow this hostility to be translated into action on the German
or Russian pattern. It is not difficult to imagine what the fate of
the Jews would have been if, through a different turn of history,
an international body in 1917 had given Germany or Russia the
Mandate over Palestine.

Two lessons can be drawn from these considerations. The
first is that the cumbersome controls, safety valves, brakes and
buffers of a democratic regime make it unfit to carry through to
the end any calculatedly ruthless machiavellian policy. Machiavel-

184 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

lianism was the natural doctrine of Renaissance princes ; and the
equivalent in our time of the Renaissance prince is the totalitarian
despot. A trade-union boss may at times imagine that he is
Lorenzo the Magnificent ; but Transport House is not the Palazzo
Vecchio, and Westminster not the Kremlin ; so he is bound to
remain a pseudo-machiavellian.

The second lesson applies to those who hold that there is
nothing to choose between Western imperialism and Eastern
totalitarianism ; for whom British policy in Palestine or Greece
is on a par with German policy in Poland or Russian policy from
the Baltic to Rumania. Such false equations are mostly drawn
by people who have no experience of either the one or the other,
and are consequently unable to appreciate the difference in degree
between the fate often thousand Jews illegally detained in Cyprus,
and that of the as many, or twice as many, millions of living dead
in the Arctic labour camps. It is a difference which may sound
somewhat abstract to radical idealists living in safety, but not to
the people directly concerned. To live under a regime whose
inherent structure imposes a limit on its possibilities of doing evil",
or under a regime which has no such limits, is a difference which
comprises the essence of human progress. Whatever the creeds
and ideals in whose name men started revolutions and fought their
battles, the real progress achieved was at best always a transition
from a greater to a lesser evil.

The Democracies in their present form may be cold comfort,
but they are comfort nevertheless. They are the unheated
shelters where men, shivering, can still huddle together in the
totalitarian blizzard.

BO OX TWO

CLOSE-UP

During the siege of Jerusalem, two old Jews
were overheard talking.

" We can only be saved," said one, " either by
a miracle or by a natural event."

'* And what natural event ? " asked the other.

" The coming of Messiah, of course."

During the first fortnight of the life of the newborn State, it looked
as if it would share the fate of the infants under Herod whose tender
bodies were put to the sword. May J5, the date of the official termina-
tion of the British Mandate, was the appointed D-Day (Dfor Deluge),
on which the armies of five sovereign Arab Nations invaded Palestine
from the north, east and south. The days of the new State seemed to
be numbered, and speedy capitulation the Jews' only chance to avoid
wholesale massacre.

Contrary to all expectations, the mm of Haganah held their
ground. Between May 15 and our arrival in Haifa on June 4 the
main military events had been, first, the unopposed advance of an
Egyptian column through the desert to the southern boundaries of the
Jewish coastal belt in the area round Gaza, by -passing the Jewish
settlements in the Negeb. A second Egyptian column, also advancing
through purely Arab territories, had reached the southern outskirts
of Jerusalem. In the north the Jews had taken Acco and advanced
along the coast to the Lebanese frontier post at Ras en Nakura.
Syrian and Lebanese attacks on Jewish settlements in Galilee and the
Jordan Valley had been repulsed. There were inconclusive skirmishes
with Iraqi troops along the border of the Jewish coastal belt and the
hill country of Samaria. The only serious fighting was in the Old
City of Jerusalem and on the crucial Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road.

Eleven minutes after the Provisional State Council had pro-
claimed Israel's independence in Tel Aviv, President Truman had
announced the United States' de facto recognition of the new State.
Forty-eight hours later the Soviet Union recognized Israel de jure.
Guatemala, Uruguay, Poland, Czechoslovakia and other small
nations followed suit during the next few days.

On May 77, the U.S.A. delegation at the Security Council pro-
posed that the Council should declare the situation in Palestine a
" threat to peace ", according to Article 39 of the Charter, and
issue an order to end hostilities within thirty-six hours under threat
of sanctions. On May /p, Great Britain at the Security Council
opposed the proposal of the United States, which was rejected in the
Council on May 22 ; instead of issuing an " order " under threat of
sanctions , the Security Council merely " called on " both sides to
cease hostilities within thirty-six hours. At the expiry of this time-

187

l88 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

limit the Jews accepted the Security Council's call for a cease-fire,
the Arabs rejected it. Again the United States and the Soviet Union
proposed the application of sanctions against the Arabs, and again
the British attitude prevailed ; the Arabs were granted another time-
limit of forty-eight hours. When these expired, on May 26, the Jews
again accepted, and the Arabs again rejected the cease-fire call. For
the third time the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. called for sanctions, and
for the third time Sir Alexander Cadogan carried the day. The
Security Council refused to call the Palestine war a threat to peace,
refused to invoke sanctions, and accepted the British 'proposal, which
preconized a four weeks' truce, to be arranged and supervised by the
United Nations' Mediator, Count Bernadotte. It also imposed an
arms embargo against both attackers and attacked, against the regular
Arab armies which had regular stocks of war material, and the
improvised army of Israel which had none.

The time gained through Great Britain's delaying tactics in the
Security Council was used by Brigadier GluWs Arab Legion to shell
the isolated Jewish ghetto in the Old City of Jerusalem to bits, to
dynamite its last stronghold, the ancient Hurva Synagogue, and to
occupy the ruins. This action, as we have seen, was not Great
Britain* $ responsibility, as on the night of May 14-15 the Arab
Legion had ceased to be a British security force and become the
regular army of Transjordan's independent sovereign. Its com-
mander, as was later announced in the House of Commons, had,
presumably in the same night, given up his British citizenship and
become a Transjordan subject. The British officers, N.C.O.s and
technical staff of the Legion were no longer seconded to their duties
by the War Office but had transformed themselves into individual
volunteers.

Besides the Old City of Jerusalem, the Arab Legion had occupied
the strategic monastery and police station at Latrun, which dominated
the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, and thus isolated the 100,000 Jews
in the modern city of Jerusalem from the rest of Israel. On May 30
the Jews suffered a major defeat when they threw untrained troops,
mainly boys freshly arrived from the D.P. camps, into an ill-prepared
attack on Latrun. They were beaten back without difficulty by the
artillery and machine-guns of the Arab Legion, leaving over two
hundred dead on the field.

On May 31, Count Bernadotte arrived in Tel Aviv and began his
arduous negotiations to secure a truce.

We landed in Haifa four days later. The Old City of Jerusalem

PROMISE AND FULFILMENT 189

had fallen, and the situation at Latrun was still critical. Apart from
these two set-backs, the Israeli Army was in control of the whole
territory allotted by the United Nations to the Jews ; it had, in
addition, conquered the biggest Arab town, Jaffa, and the whole
coastal plain, allotted under the Partition plan to the Arabs, from
Haifa to the Lebanese border.

I

POMPEI REVERSED

Haifa, Friday, June 4, 1948

After a bumpy flight from Cyprus, which made M. feel sick
and the two returning Irgun terrorists on board look humble, a
pencilled yellow streak appears, interposed between water and
skyline : the coast of Israel. It swiftly expands, and unfolds into
the golden dunes of Acco Bay, the pine slopes of Carmel, the
suburbs of Haifa spawning over them like a skin-disease ; the
oil refineries and behind them two giant petrol tanks like mon-
strous amphorae of cement.

The great tanks are dry because the flow of Mesopotamian oil
has been diverted to Beirut and Amman. The golden dunes are
mined. Among the pines of Carmel Arab and Jewish snipers
play hide and seek. The weathered wall of Acco's Crusader
fortress had a hole blown in it through which the friends of our
terrorists made their escape.

But none of this is written over the smiling face of the bay.
The whole sunny landscape, this levantine twin-sister of the Gulf
of Naples, strikes at once the dominant chord of all journeys into
war : it is so completely peaceful.

This intense and perverse peace, superimposed on scenes of
flesh^tearing and eardrum-splitting violence, is an archetype of
war-experience. Grass never smells sweeter than in a dug-out
during a bombardment when one's face is buried in the earth.
What soldier has not seen that caterpillar crawling along a crack
in the bark of the tree behind which he took cover, and pursuing
its climb undisturbed by the spattering of his tommy-gun ? This
intersecting of the tragic and the trivial planes of existence has
always obsessed me in the Spanish Civil War, during the
collapse of France, in the London blitz.

The Dakota, with its load of terrorists, newspaper men and
war-volunteers, is preparing to land. This is the moment we
have all quietly dreaded since Le Bourget : the Arabs are sup-
posed to be blockading Israel by sea and by air; a landing
'plane is to attacking aircraft what a pigeon is to a hawk, and the

190

POMPEI REVERSED 191

Jewish state has so far no air protection. But there are no Syrian
or Egyptian planes in sight. With the relieving bump on the
runway the worst is over ; now one can settle down quietly to the
routine of another war : to another blackout, more wailing sirens,
girls in sweaty uniforms and operations according to plan.

The reflections of the sun on the ripples of the sea, the straight
thin shadows of the palm-trees on the sand, register the silent
comment of mineral and plant on that novelty in evolution, the
human brain.

The airport. As we squeeze one by one through the small
port-door of the Dakota and stumble down the wobbly step-
ladder, there is a greal/clicking of Leicas and purring of movie-
cameras. The State of Israel is exactly eighteen days old, so all
events here are Historic Events and all persons arriving from
abroad are Very Important Persons. Elated, we troop to the
Customs.

Unlike railways stations, which tell you at once what sort of
a town it is in which you have arrived, airport buildings have the
same dull, neutral architecture and atmosphere all over the world.
Waterloo is London and St. Lazare is Paris, but Croydon and Le
Bourget belong to the same aerial no-man's-land. From this rule,
Haifa airport is an exception. It is the newborn state's first and
as yet only link with the world outside. The signposts with the
Hebrew words for CUSTOMS, PASSPORTS, POLICE, LADIES and GENTS
are freshly painted and still wet. The newly appointed Immigra-
tion Officer has as yet no uniform. Nor has the Customs In-
spector ; nor the Police ; nor the Army. All servants of the
State, civil and military, wear the same dress : khaki shirt and
khaki shorts. This uniformity without uniforms strikes at once
a note of drab efficiency. An army without colour and fancy
dress deprives killing of its glamour : the soldiers of Israel hold
no magic for the female. Nowhere in Haifa did we see young
officers dining out with attractive women ; one can't even tell an
officer from a private. From the first moment one gathers that
this is a colourless, business-like war, in keeping with the drab
functionalism of Israel's architecture.

The newbaked officials at the airport are all affable, rattled
and inefficient. Here is bureaucracy in a larval state of innocence,
before it has had time to spin itself a cocoon of red tape. Soon
they will learn to scan with expressionless faces the little booklet

192 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

with the names blacklisted by the secret police, refuse explana-
tions with icy politeness, dig for hidden shekels among the
voyagers' dirty shirts, every one a little Elohim. But as yet all is
in a state of virginal muddle, as on the first day of creation, before
the heavens and the earth were divided, when Immigration
Officers, floating on little clouds through chaos, treated the
passengers to cigarettes and brandy. The one who handles our
passports visibly tries to take himself seriously, but without much
success. I imagine that every morning before breakfast he repeats
to himself a Coue formula :

" You are now a Government official in an official Government,
which every day and in every way is becoming sovereigner and
sovereigner."

He looks at our visas ; he feasts his eyes on them ; they are
another symbol of Israel having attained the dignity of statehood.
M.'s and mine are among the ten first visas issued by the Pro-
visional Government's Representation in Paris ; they are written
in Hebrew and French, stamped in with red ink, occupy a whole
page in our passports and have the serial numbers five and seven.
We showed them the same evening to a group of wounded
Haganah men in the military hospital in Haifa. They looked at
them like children at a new toy. We found later the same en-
raptured expression on the faces of people looking at the first
Israeli pound-notes, at aeroplanes with the star of David painted
on their wings, at the new flag, at the first foreign Ambassador
presenting his credentials to the Government. They can't get
over their amazement that these are real aeroplanes, real flags,
real ambassadors.

There is a story about an American Zionist who used to tell
other American Jews about the wonderful achievements of the
pioneers in Palestine how they drained marshes and made the
desert flourish without ever having been to Palestine himself.
After thirty years as an ardent propagandist, he was *at last
persuaded to make a trip to the country. When he saw the first
Hebrew village he looked bewildered, and for a few minutes kept
silent. Then he meekly asked his companions :

" Do you mean to tell me that what I have said in those
speeches is really true ? "

Israel's citizens are rubbing their eyes. It does not often
happen that a dream comes true.

POMPEI REVERSED 193

Saturday, June 5, Haifa

Before going on to Tel Aviv we decided to spend a couple of
days in Haifa, to see some old friends. So from the airport we
drove up in a taxi to the " Sanatorium " on Mount Carmel. In
peace-time this was a kind of nursing-home for the imaginary
ailments of the rich of Tel Aviv, run with great efficiency by old
Dr. Bodenheimer of Berlin, who combined an excellent kosher
kitchen with a teutonic furore for cleanliness. It inspired visions
of the manageress chasing across the dining-room with a table-
napkin after a lone streptococcus floating through the air. The
rooms have large balconies with a lovely view over the Bay, and
the air is fragrant with the scent of the famous pines of Carmel.
On very hot and very damp days, of which Carmel has many, it is
rather like entering a bathroom where somebody has just finished
having a hot bath with pine-extract Bathsheba maybe, with
Urias holding the towel. But we are at the beginning of June
and, as we left the mists of North Wales only a few days ago,
the blaze of sunshine is delightful.

After Dr. Bodenheimer had put on his hat to say grace, and
the waiters had warned us not to smoke because of the Shabbath,
we settled down to our first meal in Israel. Half of the Sanatorium
is now converted into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers ;
the other half of the guests are rich couples from Tel Aviv who
are staying here under one pretext or another in fact because
they are frightened of the air raids. People of this unpleasant
category exist in every country ; why then does their Jewish variety
strike us as particularly obnoxious ? And why does the Yiddish
lilt of the quarrelling voices in the kitchen get more on M.'s nerves
than the screaming of Italian women squabbling in the market,
or the jabbering of any foreign tourist guide ? Probably for the
same reason for which newspapers give more prominence to black-
market cases if the offender's name happens to be Abramowitz or
Cohen instead of Smith. The figure of the Jew squirming in front
of the serene, wigged Magistrate evokes a deep archetypal reson-
ance in the reader, the sources of which are as obscure to him as
the cause of his excitement about the monster of Loch Ness, the
radio-signals from Mars, or the beggar who left a million in his
will. They all are modern variants of ancient symbols of legend
and myth. Mr. Abramowitz is not an individual who has com-
mitted an individual offence; he is folklore crystallized as a

O

194 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

news-item. If his image in the reader's eye could be X-rayed, it
would reveal a modern likeness superimposed on a faded portrait
of Shylock ; and underneath that would appear some even more
shadowy mythological contours.

And that, of course, is the case, and perhaps the only case,
for the Jewish state. The particular social structure and mental
pattern which centuries of segregation impressed upon the Jews
in the Diaspora, that eery odour of otherliness, of vagrancy and
jugglery which surrounds Mr. Abramowitz who comes from
nowhere and belongs nowhere, makes him into something super-
and subhuman at the same time, a man without a shadow, a product
of crystallized folklore. Each time you burn him alive, stick a
knife into his stomach or pump gas into his lungs, he pops up
again like a jack-in-the-box, with a more horribly ingratiating
smile, and offers you a second-hand suit or a share of real estate.
This monotonous game has now been going on for some twenty
centuries and there is no sign that it will stop in the twenty-first.
But now at long last the Jew will be able to say : You don't want
me ? All right then, I'll go. ... The knowledge alone of being
able to say that will have a slow but steady healing influence on
that oldest social syndrome, the Jewish neurosis.

After dinner, on the starlit terrace of the Sanatorium, we
talked to some of the wounded Haganah soldiers. One of them
is the cowman of the collective village of Shaar Hagolan in the
Jordan valley, south of Lake Tiberias. On the first night of the
war, May i5th, they were expecting an attack from Syria, across
the Jordan ; so he, with some fifteen others, was lying on a hill
in wait for the Syrian tanks. The Arabs had cut off the spring
which supplies the water to Shaar Hagolan, and the imported
Dutch cows, the pride and main source of income of the com-
mune, were dying of thirst. There was some desultory artillery
fire from the other side of the Jordan, and each time the guns were
silent, they could hear the cows mooing their complaint in a
chorus. " Whenever I heard them/' said the cowman wonder-
* n gty " I was unable to make up my mind which was the real
reality so to speak : the war and the tanks or the wailing of the
thirsty cows in the night."

The cows, the caterpillar crawling on the tree, the smell of
the pines in the darkness. And on the other plaice, the other
reality. Both exist, but they are mutually exclusive ; and in the

POMPEI REVERSED 195

rare moments when the two patterns of experience clash, per-
ception is deepened and awareness reaches an otherwise unattain-
able intensity.

Lunch with Abram Weinshall. He says the Jews have already
some three thousand killed. The danger of a prolonged war is not
defeat, but the gradual bleeding away of the country's youth.
Three thousand killed in a total population of about 750,000 after
one month of war corresponds proportionately to two hundred
thousand Englishmen killed, or six hundred thousand Americans.

But this figure is misleading. The majority of the losses
occurred before the official war started on May 15*. Since the
beginning of the " real " war, the casualty figures have actually
gone down.

Abram's son Saul, who had been studying law in London, has
been called up by the Israeli Army and arrived back yesterday. 1
His daughter Judy is in the States ; her fiance, a volunteer from
Switzerland, was killed in the early days of the war. A couple of
years ago, when she was eighteen, she used to write me fervently
patriotic letters which, had they been intercepted by the British
censorship, would have promptly got her into jail. Abram himself
was arrested in 1947, on the sole grounds of having been a member
of the Revisionist Party some ten years ago. He spent forty days
in the concentration camp of Latrun.

The British evacuation is almost complete. The civilian
administration ceased to function on May i5th, the day the
Mandate ended. The last troops, some three or four thousand
men, are concentrated in little barbed-wire enclaves in and
around Haifa.

From the business centre of Haifa, which is downtown
adjoining the harbour area, several roads with hairpin-bends lead
up to the Jewish residential quarters spread over the slopes of
Carmel. In the course of the twenty minutes' drive from down-
town to the Sanatorium, one has to traverse three of these British
Security Zones. They consist of one or two requisitioned houses
in a strategically dominant position, surrounded by a jungle of
barbed-wire tangles, and are called " Bevingrads ". In fact they
are wire cages, small concentration camps, in which the rear-

1 While correcting the proofs of this book, I learnt that Saul Weinshall was
killed in action, in the spring of 1949, at the age of 22.

196 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

guards of Great Britain's Middle East forces live in melancholy
self-confinement. The road traverses these enclaves for stretches
of a hundred yards or so, and at each point of entry and exit,
where the road intersects the barbed wire, there are British check-
posts, with arms at the ready. They look at the driver's papers
and wave him into Bevingrad, and a hundred yards further there
is another sentry who looks at his papers and waves him out ; and
each time there is a machine-gun pointed at the car. No words
are spoken while the papers are checked, and no smiles exchanged.
The Jews try to look impassive, but scorn is written on their faces
and their silence has for the sentry a contemptuous ring. The
sentry looks equally impassive, his boots are well polished and
his movements smart, but he knows that he is the rearguard of an
Empire in retreat.

Sunday, June 6th, Tel Aviv

Palestine, a British statesman once said, has the size of a
county and the problems of a continent. Within less than forty-
eight hours of our arrival, we have tasted samples of a lot of pro-
blems. They make a mixed dish, which burns the palate like hot
curry.

We asked one of the wounded soldiers in the Sanatorium what
he thought of the political prospects after the war. He is a
kibbutznik, 1 a member of Hashomer Hazair* a gentle, dreamy
boy. He said : " First we had to get the British out. Now
we have to beat the Arabs. And after that, we will have to finish
our own fascists, the people of Irgun." " Do you really believe
the Irgun are fascists ? " I asked him. " Of course they are."
" How do you define a fascist ? " " Oh," he said wearily, " you
only have to look at them. They are the type."

The prospect of a civil war did not frighten him in the least.
Being a good marxist, civil wars appeared to him as a matter of
course in history, and appeals for tolerance as so much sentimental
poppycock just as sincere nationalists a century and a half ago
took wars of conquest for granted.

This morning we set out for Tel Aviv in a taxi, and as we
watched the traffic on the coastal road, I thought again I was back
in the Spanish war ten years ago. The road was teeming with

1 Kibbutz : collective settlement ; K&butznik : a member of it.
2 " The Young Watchman ", left-wing political Party.

POMPEI REVERSED 197

trucks and requisitioned passenger buses packed with singing
soldiers in the open trucks they all stand upright holding on
to each other, in the buses they sit on each other's knees with
elbows sticking out of the windows and their fists banging the
rhythm of the song against the tin-plating. All vehicles are
camouflaged against air attack by the simple expedient of smearing
them with a thick coating of mud ; they have the same dirty khaki
colour as the soldiers' shorts and shirts. Again that impression
of drab efficiency ; the Jews have always lacked a sense of colour.
The colour in Palestine was provided by the Arabs; but the
Arabs have gone. The shuks in Haifa are deserted, the bazaars
looted, the houses closed. The camels and the donkeys, the nar-
gilehs and the shoeblack urchins, that heavy cloud of the odour of
oriental spices which enveloped the shuks, all gone. The mud huts
of the slum villages along the coastal road are dynamited, their
population gone. It is another exodus, but the same desolation.

Truck after truck with singing, yelling soldiers. Some trucks
are covered with a kind of home-made armour-plating, some other
makeshift contraptions are trying to look like tanks. Most of the
soldiers have no rifles or kitbags. It is just like the road from
Valencia to Madrid in 1936. Everything bears the sign of amateur-
ishness, muddle and enthusiastic improvisation.

The soldiers are all young, sunburnt and visibly feeling on
top of the world. So were the Spanish militianos, the Serb
guerillas, the soldiers of the French Revolution. Only improvised
revolutionary armies know this emotional exuberance. They fight
like devils, and when they panic they run like monkeys. They are
not blase like soldiers of a regular army where grousing is a sign
of self-respect and a token of reliability. And if there can be
such a thing as a just war, then this war of Israel is a just war.

But the snag with all wars is that the phenomena which they
produce are only very indirectly connected with the idea or cause
in whose name they are waged. Those who are in it do not think
in terms of democracy, national self-determination, the Succession
to the Spanish throne or the abolition of slavery. They sing,
yell, dream of their favourite dish, masturbate and count their lice.
They are tough and sentimental, gay and melancholy, selfish and
unselfish, according to the same cheap, ready-made pattern.
They don't hate the enemy, but they love to wreck the furniture
of requisitioned billets and to leave the maximum of dirt behind,
as children love to smear filth over the wallpaper in unconscious

198 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

protest against parental don'ts. All armies breed epidemics of
infantilism. It is not the killing aspect of war, but this inevitable
degradation, the enforced lowering of the mental age, which makes
all soldiery, regardless of the cause for which it fights, into such
an un-adult, depressing phenomenon. And the sickly heroics of
the home-front are even worse. The old fusspot busybodying as
an air-raid warden, the lying poster with ' it all depends on you ",
the shortening of our lines and the lengthening of the enemy's
communications, Churchill's cigar and Hitler's lock, totem-mask
and tabu-sign, the age of the Boy Scout, the triumph of imbecility.

The abrupt changes of landscape on this coastal road, from
desert-dunes to orange groves and back to desert again, have
always fascinated me. In 1926, when for the first time I travelled
from Haifa to Tel Aviv, there was no road, and most of the country
was a wilderness. At that time the train took some five hours to
cover a distance of seventy miles, and if one travelled by car, one
6ad to make a long inland detour across the hills of Samaria.
I was spared this dilemma by being penniless and walked down
the coast on foot. I walked at a leisurely rate, avoided the more
ill-reputed Arab villages, slept and was fed in Jewish settlements
free of charge. If the settlement was a collective one, I even drew
the daily ration of cigarettes. Free board and a bed are still being
provided by all collective farms to visitors ; but to-day people
travel by cars or buses, whereas twenty years ago there were few
roads, fewer cars, no hotels or roadhouses outside the towns,
tramping was a national sport and the whole country a large family.

Such tramping experiences of one's youth leave one with a
partly nostalgic, partly proprietary feeling towards the landscape
or country where they took place. In 1926 there were only about
a dozen Jewish settlements in the coastal plain between Haifa
and Tel Aviv and most of the plain was sand-dunes, desert and
marshes. Now there is a continuous chain of them, the highroad
runs along a green carpet of artificially irrigated, reclaimed land,
with only an occasional patch of sand as an abrupt reminder of
the past. And each time we ran across such patches of desert I
got that silly proprietary feeling one has when showing one's
native town to a tourist. Citizens of young pioneer countries who
have seen their rapid transformation with their own eyes, are
particularly prone to it. Even the New York highbrow, when
showing visitors round, cannot entirely avoid giving the impression

POMPEI REVERSED 199

that he has built the Empire State Building with his own hands.
No wonder then that the Israeli citizen, whose individual share in
what has been achieved here is so much greater, and to whom
constructive achievement is historically such a novelty, is still
intoxicated with pride in every acre of reclaimed desert, in every
cow which feeds on it, in every tomato which grows there. To
his forebears in the ghetto a cow was a wild animal, and a tomato
a commodity arriving by some miracle in the grocer's shop. Held
together by a petrified faith, Jews have lived for centuries on
familiar terms with the supernatural, and completely estranged
from nature. Hence their naive delight in Jewish cows and Jewish
grass, Jewish tomatoes and Jewish eggs. They marvel at the chick
which, hardly born, knows already how to peck ; it is a wunder-
kind like those other infant prodigies who at seven know chapters
of the holy scriptures by heart. The green pastures of Israel have
sprung from a twofold desert : the waterless land and the arid
past of the nation.

To the outsider, this naively self-congratulatory enthusiasm
is at first very moving, then equally tiresome. A friend of mine,
an American newspaper man, who was being taken round by a
Government official, on being told for the twentieth time -that
Tel Aviv was built on sand, sighed in mock-despair : " I wish
they'd never done it." The official's face closed with a snap ; my
friend was branded an antisemite for life. Extreme touchiness
and lack of a sense of humour are outstanding features of the
pioneer mentality.

We pass the Tulkarem-Natanya crossroads. This is the wasp-
waist of Israel ; the coastal plain here narrows down to less than
ten miles between the sea and the Arab frontier. The front at
present runs some three miles east of the crossroads.

A few villages along the road are still populated by Arabs. Some
of them are even working in the fields ; and a little withered Arab
woman is selling oranges to Jewish soldiers out of a basket on her
back. War is Hecuba to her and she is Hecuba to war. But not
for long. A few weeks later some Arab lads will start sniping
from these villages at Jewish trucks on the road ; the Jewish army
will herd the villagers together, dynamite their houses, and put
the young men into concentration camps ; while the old ones
will tie a mattress and a brass coffee-pot on the donkey, the old
woman will walk ahead leading the donkey by the rein and the
old man will ride on it, wrapped in his kefiye, and sunk in solemn

200 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

meditation about the lost opportunity of raping his youngest
grandchild. Like all wars, this too is a pageant of half-truths in
shining armour. The victor is never entirely in the right, and
there are no innocent victims.

Monday, June 7, Tel Aviv

Since we have arrived in the Capital I am even more puzzled
by this feeling of unreality. We have had our first air-raids,
watched people digging shelters, and read the communiques. But
to read in biblical Hebrew that our troops have improved their
positions round Mount Canaan and that all is quiet by the Sea of
Galilee, is a strange experience. It is almost impossible to believe
that Israel is a real state, its army a real army, and this war a real
war. It is certainly the most improbable war that modern history
has seen. The small voice of the leaders of this Lilliput state
is drowned by a world-wide echo ; the puny facts created here
throw an enormous shadow ; the cliches of front-reportage are
overloaded with historical associations. On one side, the Holy
Jehad and the Arabian Nights ; on the other the Bible and the
Maccabeans. Each hill or wadi where the Sten guns bark has
either seen the sun stand still in Joshua's day or a miracle per-
formed by Christ ; reality is swallowed by the archetype.

But there is another reason for the elusive, dreamlike character
of the whole thing. As in all dreams, the symbols presented to
the mind have several levels of meaning. What we experience
here is a kind of Pompei in reverse. In Pompei, schoolboys playing
with marbles were suddenly caught by the lava and petrified into
monuments. They were transferred from the trivial to the tragic
plane in one abrupt jump. All catastrophes have a similar effect.
They demonstrate in a drastic form the otherwise invisible trans-
formation of trivial occurrences into historic facts. For the
present is mainly on the trivial, history always on the tragic plane.

The Pompei effect is a sudden telescoping of this otherwise
gradual transformation. Man-made catastrophes wars and
revolutions work the same way. Danton's lifted arm freezes in
mid-air into the gesture of a bronze monument. Napoleon's
liver and Cleopatra's nose belong at the same time to the trivial
and historic planes. In both the creative and the destructive kind
of cataclysm the actors are mostly unconscious of the parts they
play. They do not know where exactly the two planes meet, how
their private idiosyncrasies grow into legends, at what point a

POMPEI REVERSED 2OI

subjective gesture becomes a datum of history. People who
consciously try to precipitate the effect, to project themselves
from the trivial to the historic plane, are usually megalomaniacs
or Utopian cranks. But in this country everybody is conscious of
living through a Pompei in reverse. They feel that they are moving
through a lava-stream of history in which all that happens now will
be preserved for eternity. Even the schoolboys playing with
marbles feel a host of Maccabean spectres looking over their
shoulders.

The fascinating and endearing episodes in this mass-production
of historic facts are not the Proclamations, speeches and self-
conscious gestures of the leaders, but the little hitches which occur
in between, the holes in the cloth of history which are patched up
by hasty improvisation. There is, for instance, the story of Israel's
National Flag. It was told to us, the day we arrived, by an old
friend, the painter Karl Rubin (who has since been appointed
Israeli Minister in Rumania). It seems that one day a week or
so ago, an official advertisement appeared in the Hebrew papers
in which artists were invited to submit suggestions for the
National Flag of Israel; the time-limit given to competitors
for sending in their entries was 48 hours ! Rubin got furious,
ran to the address indicated in the advertisement, found that
nobody there knew anything about The Flag, ran to a second
and third address, and finally discovered that somebody had
appointed a committee of three little bearded men who were
to decide about the future Flag of Israel. The three little men
were representing the Left, Right and Centre parties respectively,
according to the " party key system " which is a sacred tradition
in this country, and which prescribes that in each public body
and institution all political parties have to be represented in pro-
portion to their relative strength. He also discovered that none
of the members of the committee had had any previous dealings
with either art or heraldry in his life. It hadn't even occurred
to them that aesthetic considerations had anything to do with
their task. A Flag, they explained to Rubin, was a political
problem ; the task of the member for the Left was to watch that
there shouldn't be too many religious symbols on the Flag ; the
task of the member for the Right, to prevent it from having too
much red in it ; while the member for the Centre was to balance
their conflicting views by taking various bits from the various
sketches of the competitors and concocting a sort of coalition flag

2O2 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

as one formulates a resolution from several draft proposals.
So Rubin gave up arguing with them and went to the Govern-
ment, who were all busy with the War on their hands, and finally
succeeded in obtaining an extension of the deadline for the com-
petition, and a half-promise that an artist would be coopted to
the committee. But as artists, like all other citizens in Israel,
belong to one or the other political party, the coopted member
would upset the party key and there the matter rests for the
moment. 1

The second story is in a similar vein. At one of its first
meetings, the Israeli State Council, which functions as a kind of
provisional Parliament, elected as its president the veteran Zionist
leader, Professor Weizmann. As Israel has as yet no constitution,
they could not make him President of the Republic, but it was
clear that this was in fact what the election implied. Then came
the hitch, the hole in the cloth of History. Firstly, the new
President had to be elected in his absence (he only arrived in
Israel some four months after its proclamation of independence).
However, this somewhat unusual situation was passed over in
silence in view of the President's precarious health and equally
precarious relations with the Prime Minister, Ben Gurion.
Secondly, there was the question of the President's nationality.
While the British Mandate lasted, only two years of residence in
Palestine were needed to acquire Palestine citizenship ; and to
become a Palestine citizen was regarded as the patriotic duty of
every Jewish immigrant. Though Dr. Weizmann's duties as
leader of the world Zionist organization kept him mostly abroad,
he could of course have acquired Palestine nationality without
any difficulties being raised by the Mandatory authorities. But
the fact is that he had never done this, preferring to keep his
British passport. So, when the question of his election came up,
one of the two Revisionist members in the State Council who
represent the Opposition, asked the impertinently pertinent
question " whether a foreigner, and an Englishman at that, could
become President of Israel". The Minister of Justice, Dr.
Rosenblueth, muttered in embarrassment that he would consider
the point; but the matter was conveniently . forgotten and the
election carried by acclamation.

1 As I was told later, tiie reason for the hurry about the flag was that Israel
had acquired a few cargo ships which had got into difficulties with port
authorities abroad for having no flag to show.

POMPEI REVERSED 203

Last morning, our first in Tel Aviv, we were woken up at
8 A.M. by the crack of a bomb from an Egyptian plane. It fell a
couple of hundred yards from our hotel on the sea front a small
25-pounder anti-personnel bomb and caused no damage beyond
shattering a few shop-windows around. With our memories of
the Vis and Vas ovef London, we took a somewhat snobbish
attitude about the Lilliput bombs in this Lilliput war. Yet a
week ago forty-one people were killed in a bus queue during an
air-raid rather more than the average number of victims caused
by the round hundred times heavier bombs which fell on London.

II

DAVID AND GOLIATH

EXACTLY a week after our arrival, on June u, the first truce
came into effect. Four weeks later, on July 9, hostilities were
resumed. After ten days, on July 18, the second truce began.
It was interrupted, though not officially and only in fact, by the
two Israeli campaigns in the Negeb in October and December,
and other sporadic outbreaks on other fronts ; these were each
time settled by local " cease-fires " and " stop-fires ", which re-
presented, so to speak, square brackets within the round brackets
interspersed in the course of the war.

This war between truces, on the instalment plan, was another
unique aspect of this unique campaign. It reminded one of those
old Wild West serials in which films used to end with the heroine
suspended by her flowing hair from a rope-bridge over an abyss,
and the caption : " Another exciting instalment will be shown in
this theatre next week ". Or, to alter the metaphor, it was David
fighting Goliath over six rounds, with the U.N. umpire's gong
signalling the end of each round just when things were beginning
to warm up. All this may sound frivolous ; but the fact is that this
Holy War of Islam, which had for so many years haunted their
imagination, was a bitter disappointment to believers in the Arab
myth.

It was, because of its many historic echoes, a war more than
others obscured by bombastic half-truths. Propaganda, rhetorics
and distortion surrounded the scanty facts in a series of concentric
layers, and to get at the core of truth was like peeling an onion,
sometimes with watering eyes. The outer and most transparent
layer of untruth was the series of Arab victories reported during
the initial period not only in the British Press, but by most
European newspapers, who were uncritically echoing the Arabian
Night tales put out by Radio Cairo and Radio Baghdad effect-
ively helped by the inexperience of the Israeli Press and Public
Relations Office. Then, as it became gradually known that the
Israeli forces were holding their ground and even going over to the

204

DAVID AND GOLIATH 205

attack, truth was romanticized in the opposite direction : 750,000
Jews were by a sheer miracle defeating forty million Arabs with the
British Empire thrown in.

This version would have been much nearer the truth if the
Arab countries had been comparable to modern European nations
whose entire manpower and productive capacity are mobilized in
a war. But such comparisons are misleading. The social back-
wardness of the Arab countries makes any coordinated national
effort impossible for them ; their fighting forces are not modern
conscript armies but more like mediaeval mercenary troops
illiterate, badly trained, of low morale, and quite incapable of
fighting a modern war. With all the bragging and blustering of
the Arab Governments and their inimitable radio announcers, the
total number of troops mustered by the six countries which
launched the Holy War against the Jews was, at a rough estimate,
between 30,000 and 40,000 men ; among these, 4000 members of
the Arab Legion, 3000 Lebanese, 3000 to 4000 Syrians, 5000 to
6000 Iraqis, 2000 to 3000 Saudi Arabians, 12,000 Egyptians and
3000 Irregulars under Fawzi Kaukaji. Their overall strength was
thus roughly equivalent to that of the armed forces of Israel,
which had proceeded from May 15 onwards with a total mobiliza-
tion of its manpower on modern lines.

Nevertheless, the odds were heavily against Israel. The forty
million Arabs were after all a reality, if only as a manpower
reservoir hardly tapped but practically inexhaustible. For the
750,000 Jews, on the other hand, casualties were irreplaceable.
Secondly, the maintenance of a disproportionately large army put
a terrific economic strain on the small Jewish community, which
increased as the interminable truce dragged on. Thirdly, and
this was their most serious handicap, if the Arab regular armies
had little modern equipment in tanks, artillery and aircraft at the
beginning of the war, the Jews had none at all. And in the
subsequent race to smuggle in equipment despite the arms
embargo, the Arabs had the advantage of their immense frontiers
and coast-lines defying control by U.N. observers, whereas the
Jews had only an easily supervised coast-line of a hundred miles
and three or four closely watched airports. Finally, the tiny
area of Israel less than 100 miles long, from 15 to 25 miles
wide gave them no opportunity for defence in depth and no
chance to retreat. They had to fight with their backs to the wall ;
and that is what won them the fight.

206 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

It took us over a fortnight to assemble the necessary permits,
safe conducts, transport and escort for a tour round the frontiers
of Galilee.

Our escort was a young man of German-Jewish origin called
Shlomo (Hebrew for Solomon). His surname we never found out,
nor that of any of the officers and local commanders with whom
we talked and travelled along the fronts. It was all part of the
atmosphere of dark secrecy in which Haganah shrouded itself.
These men had so long lived underground that the habit of con-
spiracy had become second nature to them, and now they could not
get out of it. The unique practice of keeping even the names of the
General Staff and Army Commanders secret had already pro-
duced a swarm of pernicious rumours in the foreign Press to the
effect that the Jewish Army was run by Soviet generals on active
service. At the first Press conference we attended in Tel Aviv
the public information officer introduced a young man as the
General Officer Commanding Operations without mentioning his
name. An American journalist had a crack at him with " How
do you spell your name, sir ? " but was told that for " security
reasons " the G.O.C/s identity could not be disclosed. Actually,
his name was Yigal Sukenik ; he was the son of a well-known
archaeologist at the Hebrew University.

Some weeks later anonymity was dropped ; but at that time not
only names but also the addresses of Army headquarters in Tel
Aviv and everywhere else were kept secret, which was a source of
endless muddle and confusion. As we proceeded on our journey
to Galilee, our escort Shlomo would get out in various towns and
villages, hail a soldier, go into a conspiratorial huddle with him
about the probable whereabouts of headquarters where he was
to get his security briefing and some more permits, if not an addi-
tional field security escort. After driving about for a while in
quest of H.Q., when Shlomo felt that the trail was getting hot, he
would leave the car and continue his search on foot, so as not to
betray its location. We were drifting along on our journey in a kind
of elusive and fluid universe in which there were no fixed points of
support, such as headquarters and responsible commanders, only
places " somewhere in Israel " and some Uris and Moshes and
Reubens Big Reubens, Small Reubens, Reubens from Khanita
and Reubens No. 3.

DAVID AND GOLIATH 2VJ

We had to go through Haifa again, and there we pieced together
the improbable story of the conquest by the Jews of this key
harbour and prize city of the Middle East after only a* few hours'
street fighting, and at the price of eighteen Jewish and less than a
hundred Arab casualties. More than to anything else it was due to
psychological causes. The 70,000 Arabs of Haifa abandoned the
town after no more than a token fight because they had been
completely demoralized by the desertion of their leaders and the
psychological warfare waged on them by Haganah. One after
another the local Arab notables had slipped out by night to Beirut
or Cyprus, on motor yachts laden with their families and furniture.
Through a system of tapping telephone wires Haganah learned
of each of these desertions and was able to announce them im-
mediately in Arabic broadcasts from their illegal radio station. 1

A few days before the decisive battle, the Arab chief com-
mander, Amin Bey Izzed Din, vanished in a motor-boat towards
Beirut under the pretext of fetching reinforcements. By that
time Haganah was using not only its radio station, but also loud-
speaker vans which blared their sinister news from the vicinity
of the Arab shuks. They warned the Arab population to keep
clear of the billets of the foreign mercenaries who had infiltrated
into the town, warned them to send their women and children
away before new contingents of savage Iraqis arrived, promised
them safe conducts and escorts to Arab territory, and hinted at
terrible consequences if their warnings were disregarded. In the
industrial town of Haifa Jews and Arabs had always got on par-
ticularly well together, so that after their leaders had deserted
them the Arabs were rather more inclined to listen to their
Jewish neighbours than to flowery exhortations from abroad.

Thus Haifa yielded to Haganah's first vigorous attack with
very little resistance. After the Arabs had left, Haganah dis-
covered several armouries containing machine-guns and huge
stocks of ammunition which had never been put to use. In fact,
Haifa fell like Jericho had once fallen, with Haganah's loud-
speaker vans replacing the trumpets which had made the walls
crumble.

It was more or less the same story in the other mixed towns
during the civil war period. Everywhere Arab morale collapsed
under the simultaneous impact of the desertion of the effendis,

1 Haifa, as will be remembered, fell in April 1948, when Palestine was still
under British Mandate.

208 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of panicky rumours and of Jewish improvisation and propaganda.
But, above all, the Palestine Arabs lost the civil war without a
serious fight for the simple reason that they had nothing to fight
for. They had accepted the presence of the Jews a long time ago,
and on a local level got on quite well with them as long and
as far as no outside interests interfered. They were an easy-
going, peace-loving and individualistic people, with narrow
interests and no national consciousness. They cultivated their
little gardens, cafes and bazaar-shops, and had no ambitions to
fight. They had kept away both from the First and Second World
Wars which did not affect their interests ; this time, too, they
would have been quite willing to let the Jews and the neighbouring
Arab princes fight it out between themselves and perhaps to
come in at the end for a little looting and quiet killing, as is the
custom in these latitudes.^ All this was reflected in the probably
most typical and instructive episode of the civil war, the battle for
Safed.

It is referred to in Israel as the Miracle of Safed which is
in keeping with the traditions of this hallowed centre of mediaeval
Jewish mysticism, where the Kabbala originated and in whose
surrounding^ some Jewish families of scholars and mystics have
survived in uninterrupted succession since the ancient Jewish
State. Besides being a spiritual centre of Judaic tradition, Safed
is also the strategic key town of Northern Galilee, and one of the
most beautiful places in Palestine perched on a hill nearly
3000 feet high and commanding a lovely view over the Galilean
mountains. We drove up to Safed late in the evening from the
Hula region on the Syrian frontier ; and as the car climbed up
the serpentine road to Mount Canaan, we had alternating views
of the Sea of Galilee in the east and the Mediterranean in the west.
To the east it was already night, and an enormous orange moon
was rising over the lake ; while in the west lay a different world
of coloured twilight, with the sun just setting in the Mediter-
ranean. Arrived in Safed, we put up in the Central Hotel, from
where a whole school was just moving out evacuee children
returning to their Galilean settlement which had been made safe
for them again by the latest Israeli advance. The proprietor of
the hotel is old Chaim Maiberg, who comes from the stock of the
first immigrants of the i88os. He produced a bottle of the famous
Safed arak, which contains no aniseed and does not get cloudy with
water.

DAVID AND GOLIATH 20Q

Although Safed, because of its height, is supposed to be one of
the coolest places in Israel, it was so hot that I slept on the balcony.
The next morning we set out in search of the local Haganah
commander, whose identity and location were of course top secret.
When at last we found him in his headquarters in the old city,
he turned out to be the son of old Maiberg, whom we had just left
breakfasting with his papa at the hotel. Like most commanders
of the Israeli Army he was a sdbra l and incredibly young, about
25. Equally typical was the contrast between the bearded,
patriarchal, ultra-Jewish father with his little black skull-cap
and the blond, good-looking young man with his neutral, " de-
salinated " features and the slightly anglicized manners which
he had acquired, together with thirty thousand others of his
generation, as a volunteer in the British Army. Young Com-
mander Maiberg explained to us the inside workings of the Miracle
of Safed.

The total population of the town at the outset of the battle
consisted of 12,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews. The strategic position
of the Jews within the town was such that, in the estimate of the
commander of the British garrison, they could hold out for not
more than two hours after the garrison had been evacuated.

The lay-out of the town is as follows. Safed is built round
the slopes of a hill which dominates the main high roads of central
Galilee and which, two thousand years ago, was one of the main
strongholds of Flavius Josephus* revolt against the Romans. The
top of this hill is a fairly even plateau, about 150 yards long and
30-50 yards wide, overgrown with shrubs. This small plateau
dominates the whole town and its approaches. A mediaeval
fortress once stood here, built on the ruins of some Judean fortress
which was probably built on the ruins of some Canaanite fortress.
It is called the Matzuba. When the Britisji left Safed the Matzuba
was occupied by the Arabs.

Along the gentle slopes down from the Matzuba are spread
out the Jewish and Arab quarters. The Jewish quarter occupied
about one-third of the conic mantle of the hill, the Arab quarter
about two-thirds.

The hill round which Safed is built is surrounded by other
hills, all but one of which were in Arab hands. The one exception
was Mount Canaan which, apart from its historic echoes, had little

1 Sabra : current nickname for Palestine-born Jews, derived from the
prickly fruit of the cactus plant.

P

210 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

value for the Jews. On the hill opposite Mount Canaan, and
directly to the north of Safed, stands the formidable Teggart
Fortress. It is one of a series of steel-and-concrete fortresses
built in strategic positions all over the country by General Teggart
during the Arab Revolt. The one in Safed is the second biggest
in Palestine ; it could only be reduced by heavy artillery or aerial
block-busters and the heaviest weapons the Jews in Safed had
were three two-inch mortars, whose effect on the fortress would
have been about that of pea-shooters.

The British garrison began to prepare for the evacuation of
Safed at the beginning of April. Its commander, Colonel X of
the ist Battalion Irish Guards, seems to have been under orders
to hand over to the Arabs, on evacuating the town, the Teggart
Fortress and the Safed Police Station which two buildings
between them would allow the Arabs to keep every single Jewish
house under direct fire. Whatever the political leanings of the
officers of the British garrison, it must be assumed that they spent
a few sleepless nights visualizing what would happen after they had
withdrawn according to plan, since they must have known that
the orders for their withdrawal were such as to deprive the Jewish
minority of any chance of defending themselves. Colonel X
first tried, about a fortnight before the British evacuation of
Safed was due, lo persuade Haganah to withdraw its men from
the town ; if this were done the Arabs would guarantee the bodily
safety of the 1500 unarmed Jews. It must be assumed that the
Colonel either naively believed in the chivalry of the Iraqi mer-
cenaries and of Kaukaji's bands who were already in control of
the Arab quarter of Safed, or that he thought that even a slender
chance of avoiding a massacre, by persuading the Jews to lay down
their arms, was better than the certainty of a massacre if they
did not.

Haganah refused to withdraw. According to our Haganah
informants among them young Maiberg and a chubby South
African war veteran called Harry the Colonel and his liaison
officer, Captain Y, tried almost to the last moment to persuade the
Jews to give up both Safed and the only Jewish settlement in
the region, a small commune a few miles away called Ein Zeithn,
the Olive Spring. Ein Zeitim was cut off from Safed, which in
turn was cut off from the rest of Jewish Palestine. Young Maiberg
interpreted these efforts as a proof of the machiavellian design of
the British to demoralize Haganah by a " war of nerves ". During

DAVID AND GOLIATH 211

the last few days a number of rather hectic telephone conversa-
tions took place between the British officers and Maiberg or Harry.
According to young Maiberg (who, previous to serving in the
British Army, had picked up a Scottish accent in a missionary
school) these talks were on the following lines :

Captain Y to young M. : " You should really evacuate Bin
Zeitim. Every soldier knows that in a tight spot one has to
shorten one's lines."

Young M. : " If you were a Jew and had spent years in concen-
tration camps and been beaten up a wee bit, and then were
smuggled into Palestine and settled down at last on a farm of your
own, you wouldn't leave either, whatever happened."

Captain Y : " Then Haganah must give them an order to
leave."

Young M.: " That wouldn't do a wee bit of good. They
wouldn't obey any order to leave their settlement."

The Captain gave up ; obviously Jewish strategy was different
from all other strategy. But, when all is said, the whole Jewish
community of Palestine was strategically in such an impossible
situation that the only reasonable decision would have been to
shorten their lines and clear out of the country. It so happened
that their only line of retreat was the sea ; and at the other end
of the sea they had no bases either. The Arabs of Palestine could
run away to Syria, Transjordan, Egypt ; they had thousands of
miles behind them. The Jews had no other choice but to stay
where they were or perish. This was the overall consideration
determining the strategy of the Jewish war.

Anyway, on one of the following days Captain Y took a
stroll to Em Zeitim, and when he came back he remarked to
young M., in the words of the latter : " Now that I have seen the
place and the people, I quite agree that it would be a waste of time
to try and persuade them to leave." He seemed to be rather
shaken, said young M.

Soon afterwards the Colonel rang up Harry late one night and,
in Harry's version of the dialogue, said to him :

" I am really rather worried about what's going to happen
when we go."

Harry (in his cosy, slow South African voice) : " Whatever
happens, you can rest assured that we shall never forget the
meanness and trickery of the British."

The Colonel (almost in tears) : " You must appreciate our diffi-

212 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

culties. All our forces are being withdrawn from Palestine, and
we feel that we can no longer control the situation."

Harry : " That's all right, we know that already."

The Colonel : " But, my dear fellow, I'm very worried, very
worried indeed."

Harry : " Don't you worry, Colonel. We trust God and our-
selves."

(Comment by Harry : " You know I just said that, but really
Fm not religious at all.")

In the end neither Haganah nor the Jewish community leaders
were officially notified of the date when the British garrison would
go and leave the town without any authority in control. On
April 1 6, one month before the termination of the British Man-
date, and of the Mandatory's international responsibility for the
maintenance of law and order, at twelve noon Haganah scouts
reported to young M. an unusual event : the local commander
of the Arab irregulars, Adib Shukatli, and the Arab Chief of Police
Sidi Qadura, escorted by twenty armed irregulars, had been seen
walking into the Police Station, where they were received by the
British officer in command.

Approximately at the same hour a Haganah detachment on
Mount Canaan was surrounded by British infantry and armoured
cars ; and while they were thus cut off from the Teggart Fortress,
the fortress itself was handed over by the British commander to
Arab troops. As it transpired later, these troops were not even
Palestinians, but Iraqis.

This happened round midday. By 3 P.M. the last British
vehicle and soldier had left Safed. Even before they left, about
2 P.M., the Arabs started shooting with machine-guns and mortars
at Jewish houses from the Police Station. A few hours later,
under covering fire from the Teggart Fortress, they occupied the
Matzuba, the plateau dominating the town. The battle of Safed
was on.

It was a ding-dong battle which lasted for three weeks. Neither
Arabs nor Jews like hand-to-hand fighting. They prefer sniping
from windows and throwing tins filled with dynamite. The
Arabs were in possession of the three strategic positions which
dominate the town : the Teggart Fortress, the Matzuba and the
Police Station. They outnumbered the Jews by eight to one.
With a minimum of planned coordination they could have
stormed the Jewish quarter under covering fire from these three

DAVID AND GOLIATH 213

positions. They lacked both this minimum of coordination and
the guts to make a direct attack.

The Jewish defence was concentrated round three strong
points : old Maiberg's Central Hotel, a building called the
Commercial Centre and the Technical School. The latter was
destroyed by mortar-fire ; the other two, relatively solid three-
storey houses, held out to the end and saved the Jewish quarter.

The fight was full of picturesque episodes. Old Maiberg
defended his hotel kosher kitchen, reasonable prices with the
courage of the lion and the' cunning of the serpent, as the Bible
has it. The flat roof of the hotel is only about 200 feet below the
level of the top of the Matzuba. While the British were still in
Safed, old Maiberg had been building, at night, brick-and-mortar
pill-boxes on his roof. During the day the British Chief of Police
kept discovering the pill-boxes and ordering them to be demolished.
Old Maiberg took his pill-boxes down in the afternoon and put
them up again at night. At the same time he was engaged in
fantastic architectural undertakings. He made a hole in the
partition wall to his neighbour's garden, erected a brick structure,
rather recalling some public urinals in Paris, round the porch of
his next-but-one neighbour, built a tiny bridge connecting the
porches of two houses further on, and by similar makeshift
devices succeeded in constructing from the Central Hotel to the
heart of the Jewish quarter a line of supply protected at every
point from the machine-guns of the Police Station. Simul-
taneously young Jewish boys built a concrete ditch across the
slope half-way up between the Central Hotel and the Matzuba.
Officially it was a canal serving some irrigation purpose. In fact
it was neither a trench, for it lay parallel to the firing lines of the
Police Station, nor a tank trap, for no tank could come down that
way from the plateau. It was a trap* for barrels filled with
dynamite, which old Maiberg was convinced the Arabs would
roll down from the Matzuba at his hotel. He knew Arab tactics
and he was not mistaken. The ditch and the sheltered passage
saved the Central Hotel.

As for the second Jewish stronghold, the Commercial Centre,
its fate was touch and go when the Arabs built a tunnel from
a house in their own quarter a hundred yards away, with the
intention of coming up under the Commercial Centre and dyna-
miting it. The Jews were unaware of these activities, even when
the tunnel had progressed to within a few yards of their walls.

214 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Then something happened which scientists would call a statistic-
ally improbable event, and the old mystic scholars of Safed call
a miracle. A 25-pound shell from a Jewish mortar fell exactly
over the extreme point of the tunnel and made the earth cave in.
We looked around there and found that on an area of roughly a
thousand square yards no other shell had fallen. The event is
the more improbable as the shell was a freak shell, the Jews
having no interest in shooting at the area immediately adjoining
their own stronghold. The most curious fact about the whole
thing is that when the Arab tunnel caved in the Jews still noticed
nothing, while the Arabs, convinced that the Jews had discovered
the tunnel, gave the plan up.

After three weeks of this cloak-and-dynamite warfare, the
Jews decided that the time was ripe to strike. They struck on
the night of May 8 ; and on the morning of the gth Safed was
theirs. They struck simultaneously at three points : the Matzuba
plateau, the Police Station and a minor Arab stronghold, the
Shalba building. The Matzuba they stormed round midnight,
having climbed the shrubby slopes under cover of darkness one
of the most obliging aspects of Arab tactics is that they rarely
send out observation patrols, and that everybody goes to sleep
at night. Having reached a promontory of the plateau unobserved,
they opened concentrated fire on the Arab trenches ; the latter
were manned by sleeping Iraqi soldiers, who ran away with gluey
eyes. They left behind three dead ; the Jews lost one man and
had ten slightly wounded. It was not an exaggerated price to
pay for the key town of Galilee.

The Police Station was taken by Haganah at about the same
time, by the classic method of dynamiting a hole in its wall and
smoking out the garrison. We have seen these identically shaped
holes in the police stations of Safed, Samakh and Acco. It is an
almost monotonously repetitive story, and after a while, looking
at these holes, one thinks the whole thing is childishly easy. But
never have Arab soldiers, even in the most isolated and strategic-
ally impossible Jewish strongholds in Palestine, made a hole in
the wall and crept into it with two hand-grenades in their belts
and knives in their mouths.

The third Arab stronghold, the Shalba building, was taken
by the same method. The Jews gained possession of these three
strongholds on the morning of May 9, and by May 10 not a
single Arab was left in Safed. They fled as they had fled from

DAVID AND GOLIATH 215

Haifa, Jaffa and other places, leaving their houses, goods and
chattels behind, and the last cup of coffee half drunk in the tiny
china cup.

But the Teggart Fortress was still in Arab hands, and that
was a building into whose walls no holes could be blown. It had
become curiously silent from the day after the Matzuba had been
taken and the civilian population had run away. The Jews thought
this silence was a trick to lure them into a rash attack on the
fortress. Two days later some young boys came over from Ein
Zeitim. They had heard that Safed had fallen, and came to
celebrate. In their innocence they believed that the heroic soldiers
of Haganah had taken not only the town but the Fortress too. So
they walked up to the heavy concrete gates, and on finding them
open strolled into the Fortress yelling " Is anybody there ? "
There was nobody. The Iraqi garrison had left discreetly the
night before without firing a shot. There is one version according
to which the Jews of Safed had spread the rumour that Haganah
had succeeded in producing atom bombs not very big ones,
just a kind of pocket atom bomb which did not kill 200,000 people
as in Hiroshima, but only 20,000 at best. Young Maiberg denied
this story indignantly, obviously thinking that it was beneath the
dignity of Haganah warriors to employ such cheap tricks. But
in view of the psychological warfare methods employed by
Haganah in Haifa, Jaffa and other places, the story seems not
unlikely. The more so as all Arab prisoners of war seemed
convinced that the Jews had a secret weapon called the " adum ",
which makes fire spout out of the earth and houses cave in without
visible cause.

This, then, is the story of the fall of the holy town of Safed,
fortress in the last war of the Jews in A.D. 70, and a proof, two
thousand years later, that " rivers may yet flow uphill ".

Two scenes stand out in my memory of our last hours in
Safed, like themes from Moussorgsky's " Pictures in an Exhibi-
tion ". One is the bleak interior of a disused garage where two
incredibly old Arabs, a man and a woman, sat propped up against
the back wall like the limp dolls of a puppet theatre after the
show is over. The curtain had fallen and they had been forgotten
there, left behind by their families as useless ballast, for Allah
to take care of them. Whether they had been sitting there for
hours, or days, or weeks nobody knew, and they probably knew
less than the others. Their world had caved in, for reasons beyond

2l6 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

their comprehension, and they simply remained sitting where
somebody had dumped them, without speaking, moving or think-
ing, in a dim, merciful haze. They might have been mummies
thrown out of their tombs by an earthquake ; the clay jug of
water and the morsels of bread beside them on the concrete
floor of the garage might have been left there as their ritual fare
for the next world.

The second scene is the interior of the old Synagogue of the
Ari where three bearded old Jews were sitting, each in the centre
of a hermetically closed world of his own, studying the secrets
of the Kabbala. One, very short-sighted, bent so closely over an
immense folio of Hebrew script that his tangled beard swept
slowly across the yellow page and his avidly moving lips seemed
literally to lap up and gulp down the inked words off the parch-
ment. A second was loudly chanting a different text from a
different folio to himself, while his body performed a series of
jerky bows from the hips each time the sacred words Adonai
or Elohim came up. The third was wandering up and down
between the empty pews and past the altar, holding his text in
front of him ; now and then he stopped at a striking or puzzling
passage and then his murmur would become a triumphant shout,
accompanied by a wild waving of his arms, as the right interpre-
tation of the obscure words occurred to him. Each of the three
sages was absorbed in his own holy madness ; and as untouched
by the unholy madness of the war as the two old Arabs waiting in
their garage-crypt for Allah's call.

3

So much, then, for the civil war, which lasted until the real
war started with the invasion of the regular Arab armies.

In Galilee the invading armies were those of Syria and the
Lebanon, with some scattered Iraqi troops thrown in. The shape
of Jewish-held territory may be approximately compared to that
of a closed fist with only the index and the little finger stretched
out. The closed fist corresponds to the compact Jewish area of
the Jezreel Valley between Haifa Bay in the west and the stretch
of the Jordan from Beisan to Lake Tiberias in the east. The little
finger is the coastal belt from Haifa Bay to the Lebanese frontier
which the Jews conquered during the first days of the war. The
index finger corresponds to the strip of territory stretching out

DAVID AND GOLIATH 2IJ

northward from Lake Tiberias to the sources of the Jordan near
Dan, 1 including Safed and a whole cluster of old and new Jewish
settlements. It was this valuable strip or finger which the invaders
aimed at cutting off from the body of Israel.

In the hill country between the two fingers the situation
remained fluid ; no serious fighting occurred here until, between
the first and the second truce, Haganah took the offensive,
occupied Nazareth and cleared the whole area up to the frontier.
The Arab troops in this region were Fawzi Bey's ill-organized
bands, reinforced by some Nazi ex-prisoners of war, by Croat
Ustachis, British deserters and other mercenary riff-raff collected
in Beirut. Apart from ambushing Jewish convoys and looting
Arab villages, they never undertook any serious action. The
clearing up of this Arab pocket between the two fingers by
Haganah was more in the nature of a mopping-up operation than
of a military campaign.

Nor did the Lebanese undertake any offensive action along
the coast towards Haifa. Both the Lebanese and the Syrian
armies' efforts were entirely concentrated against the other
" finger " from Lake Tiberias to the upper reaches of the
Jordan. Had they succeeded in cutting through this strip, and
linking up with the forces in the pocket in and north of Nazareth,
Jewish Galilee would have gone ; and with it the main pride and
achievement of Zionist pioneering.

The main attempts to cut through the finger from the east
were made by the Syrians at Dagania, south of Lake Tiberias,
and at Mishmar Hayarden, south of Lake Hula; while the
Lebanese attacked from the west, a little further up, at Ramat
Naphtali. In each case the attack was directed against one of
the Jewish frontier settlements mentioned, and was repulsed by
the local Haganah corps of the settlers, with little outside help.
In those early days of the war, having just emerged from under-
ground illegality, Haganah was not an organized army in the
usual sense. It had no regiments, brigades or companies ; its
only mobile units, the few thousand men of Palmach, were mainly
engaged on the central front round Latrun. Haganah's strength

1 The same place represented the northernmost tip of the ancient Jewish
State. There is a story that when, during the Peace Conference after the First
World War, Lloyd George and Cl&nenceau came to the question of the frontiers
of Palestine, there was no map handy, so Lloyd George, remembering the bibli-
cal phrase, suggested that the frontiers should stretch " from Dan to Beersheba '*
and so they did.

2l8 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

and resilience rested entirely on the fact that it was a kind of
country-wide home guard with a trained nucleus of men in
every village, residential quarter and communal settlement. In
particular, the communal settlements, dotted in strategic posi-
tions along the frontiers and all over the country, served with
their stockades and watch-towers and their local Haganah organ-
ization as natural centres of resistance both against the attack
of irregulars from inside the country and against invasion from
abroad.

Measured by European standards, the Arab .Holy War was
an operetta war. But there was also an epic quality of courage
and self-sacrifice in the defence of the communal settlements
with their grotesquely inadequate arms against the invading
armies. It may be iOustrated by a few typical episodes from the
battle for Galilee. I quote from my diary.

Sunday, June 20, Dagania

This is my third visit to Dagania since 1927. This oldest of
all collective settlements looks lovelier than ever under its fire-
works of scarlet acacias in full flower. To M.'s bitter disappoint-
ment old Wabash is no longer alive. While I get to work to
piece together the story of the battle with the Syrian tanks, she
goes off for a swim in the Jordan which flows past at a stone's
throw from the northern fence, fringed on both banks by silent
willows and eucalyptus trees, in a green tunnel of leaves. A
hundred yards up the road to the east stands a burnt-out Syrian
armoured car, watching her.

The low, whitewashed houses between the red and green
acacia trees are spattered with shell-holes ; but not a single one
is completely destroyed. An amazing number of freak shells
seem to have bounced off trees and in and out of dining-room
windows and doors. Each of them means a cherished near-escape
story to some member of the commune. They were bombarded
by artillery and from the air for several days, but nobody was
killed. Most of the stuff that fell was 5o-pounders, with a few
loo-pounders thrown in.

The show began with the evacuation by the British troops of
the town of Samakh, a mile or so to the east of Dagania, on the
southernmost tip of Lake Tiberias. Samakh, which strategically
controls the duster of Jewish settlements south of the lake, is an
Arab town within Israel's U.N.O. boundaries. As in Safed, the

DAVID AND GOLIATH 219

Police Station, key building of the town, was handed over by the
departing British to the Arabs. The next day, a commando unit
of eleven Haganah men dynamited one of the classic holes in its
walls, and smoked the Arab garrison out. As usual, this initial
Jewish success was the signal for the exodus of the whole Arab
population of the town,

A few days later the Syrian invasion began. Samakh was its
first obvious target. After three days of intense shelling by
Syrian artillery the Jews had to evacuate it. They also had to give
up two communal settlements to the south of Samakh, Massada
and Sha'ar Hagolan. The defence of the western shore of Lake
Tiberias and of the gates of Galilee now hinged on the twin
settlements of Dagania Aleph and Dagania Beit. 1

After several days of artillery fire and air raids, on May aoth,
the Syrian motorized spearhead attacked Dagania. The battle
lasted from 4 A.M. to i P.M. The Syrians attacked with eight
medium Renault tanks, deployed across the fields facing the
eastern fence of Dagania Aleph and Beit, and supported by some
ten armoured cars. The settlers of Dagania had a few rifles with
armour-piercing bullets, some bottles with home-made molotov-
cocktails, and a number of sten-guns. These sten-guns, the
national weapon of the Israeli Army, were manufactured in secret
Haganah factories while Palestine was still under British Mandate.
They are useful weapons in street fighting and at short range,
but of little use at distances over a hundred yards. Apart from
the light arms mentioned, the men and women of Dagania had
nothing to fight with except their determination not to leave
at any price. They had dug zig-zag trenches, secured with bags
of cement and camouflaged with leaves, behind the outer fence
of the settlement, and a second and third network of trenches
further back among the acacias and palm trees.

The Syrians advanced in a hesitating, undecided sort of way.
They sent out several waves of infantry which, as soon as they
came within range of automatic fire, turned tail and swarmed
back instead of digging in. A couple of armoured cars supported
their flank along the road which skirts the lake ; one of them
was put on fire by armour-piercing bullets, and was left there
burning ; the other turned back.

Not till about noon did the eight tanks arrive at the outer
fence of the settlement. The first one, on the flank nearest the
1 Aleph = A, Beit =B.

220 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

lake, was incapacitated by a molotov-bottle which hit its cater-
pillar chain. The third broke through the fence, reached the slit
trench, there seemed to hesitate, then slowly veered south as if to
progress parallel to the trench. At that moment it was hit by
two molotov-bottles, thrown simultaneously from distances of
twenty and ten yards respectively. One was thrown by Shalom
Hochbaurn of Katowice, Poland, who arrived two years ago in
Dagania after spending altogether five years in thirteen different
concentration and D.P. camps, including Belsen. The second was
thrown by Yehuda Sprung of Cracow, thirty-eight, wife and two
children, twelve years in Dagania, before that a student of law at
Cracow University. He is a thin, timid little man who looks like
a tailor ; Hochbaum a burly youngster who resembles Yehudi
Menuhin. Neither of them had seen a tank before in his life.
M. photographed them both on the turret of "their" tank,
which still stands in the same position as at the moment when
it was hit by the beer-bottles with the inflammable liquid, and
one of its crew of two started to climb out, and was finished
off by a sten-gun. The charred fragments of the other are still
inside.

As soon as tank number three started burning, while number
one milled round itself with its chain gone, the other six tanks,
obviously by wireless order, veered round and trundled back
towards Samakh. Two more of them were put out of action
while turning. The attack was over, and they were never seen
again. A few days later the Jews recaptured the ruins of Samakh
and the two abandoned settlements, Sha'ar Hagolan and Massada.
As far as this front is concerned, the war was over.

It sounds simple enough. But a tank at twenty yards distance,
irresistibly advancing with roaring engines and fire spitting from
its turret, is a very frightening sight even for seasoned troops ;
not to mention men like Hochbaum and Sprung who had never
had any similar experience before. Obviously the loss of four
of his tanks out of eight made the Syrian commander decide that
Dagania was an impregnable fortress, probably defended by
" adums ", and made him renounce any further attempt. The
knocking out of those four tanks out of eight at close quarters, with
primitive home-made explosives and without any battle experi-
ence, was precisely the kind of test which decides whether a
nation shall live or die. For this kind of thing did not happen in
Dagania alone it happened independently and almost simul-

DAVID AND GOLIATH 221

taneously in thirty or forty other settlements, all left to their own
devices to stem as best they could the planned deluge. It hap-
pened in Ramat Naphtali and Mishmar Hayarden, the vulnerable
joints of the finger pointing to the north ; in Ein Geb east of Lake
Tiberias and in Mishmar Ha'emek on the edge of the Arab
triangle ; in Hulda and Kiryat Anavim at the approaches to
Jerusalem ; in Negba and Nirim and the other isolated outposts
in the Negeb desert.

The following night we visited Ein Geb, which is an example
of a diiferent kind. It stands in a little enclave of Israeli territory
on the eastern, Syrian shore of the lake. Strategically its position
is no doubt the most impossible among all the isolated settlements.
The small collective village of 300 souls is perched on the lake and
surrounded in a semicircle by hills which are all in Arab hands.
From these hills Syrian artillery bombards them at its ease as
if people in the dress-circle of a theatre threw peanuts on the
heads of those sitting beneath them in the stalls. The only
protection of the settlers of Ein Geb was to go underground, in
the literal sense of the word ; and this they did. Working at
night only, by the light of pocket-torches or of the moon, they
built themselves a complete underground village twelve feet down
under the earth, with dormitories, a communal dining -hall,
kitchen, infirmary and operating theatre ; the whole with a solid
ceiling of over three feet of earth and cement.

The only life-line of Ein Geb is across the lake ; and because
of the Syrian artillery on the hill-balconies, the settlers must fetch
their supplies from Tiberias at night with their only remaining
motor launch the other was sunk by a Syrian shell. We
boarded the little boat after dark at the famous Lido of Tiberias,
and had the treat of an hour's moonlight journey across the Sea
of Galilee, with kibbutzniks from Ein Geb sprawling all over the
deck and singing Hebrew songs. The Syrian guns on the dark
hills were silent in temporary observance of the truce; we
manoeuvred into the tiny harbour, and were led at once into the
underground village, blazing with electric light, and unbearably
hot in spite of the electric ventilators, which milled in the thick,
heavy air like a whisk in steaming porridge. We got out into the
only slightly fresher air above ground, and were shown around
the defences by whispering guides, bending double whenever we
had to cross an open stretch for, truce or no truce, Arab snipers

222 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

can rarely resist taking a pot-shot at a nice sharp silhouette in the
moonlight.

The battle of Bin Geb was on similar lines to the attack on
Dagania. During three days, even before the official Holy War
had begun, on May 10, u and 12, infantry and some light tanks
and armoured cars milled round the perimeter of the settlement ;
and, after suffering some casualties, withdrew for good. The
highlight of the battle was a running fight in the hills between two
Syrian units, each of which took the other for Jews. The Jewish
casualties were throughout amazingly small : two killed in
Dagania, five wounded in Ein Geb. This is part of the general
pattern of the War of the Settlements, and a tribute to the effi-
ciency of these small, hard groups of men and women, each
endowed, apart from the indispensable amount of courage, with
intelligence and initiative for self-protection.

The Haganah commander of Ein Geb seems to have been
made in the same workshop and after the same pattern as most
of the others we have met : he is a sabra, with a pleasant open
face and good physique, rather taciturn and suspicious at first,
but disarmingly naive and nice once he loosens up ; his English
is good with a specific Israeli-$0ira accent ; he wears no badges
or any insignia of rank, and has no surname, only a first name,
which I have forgotten.

Since the beginning of the bombardment Ein Geb lives only
at night. The bananas are watered at night, the fishing boats
leave after sunset and return before daybreak, the cows are milked
at night. They are given no greens, to diminish the volume of
their milk and thus shorten milking time. As they can't market
their produce, the settlers have never been so well fed as they are
now.

The children have been evacuated, but all the women stayed
and took the same part in the defence as the men ; there is
something of a legend about the " Amazons of Ein Geb ". Out-
side the settlements, however, girls are now generally withdrawn
from the front lines because, as one Haganah officer put it,
" When they know that there are girls about, the Arabs suddenly
begin to fight like lions ". Many Arab prisoners are found to
carry photographs of Jewish girls on them, pilfered in some aban-
doned house, or taken from the wallet of a dead Haganah man.

We all slept on the lawn in an open square at the centre of the
settlement, caressed by the full moon and by wafts of the sweetish

DAVID AND GOLIATH 223

smell from the corpses in the fields outside the fence. They have
not been burnt yet because of the petrol shortage.

Sha'ar Hagolan

This is one of the few communal settlements which had to be
temporarily abandoned to the Arabs ; and an example of what
might have happened to the rest of Jewish Palestine.

The whole settlement gives the impression of a funeral watch.
The houses are burnt out. The cement walls which withstood
the flames were smashed in with hammers and crowbars. The
water-tower has been dynamited ; it lies flat on its side like a
dead white elephant. One of the settlers, Roth, had assembled
a little museum of neolithic finds; he is digging now, heart-
broken, for fragments of his potteries and flints among the
charred rubble.

Sha'ar Hagolan had three main sources of income : vineyards,
banana plantations, and carp-breeding in artificial ponds. Now
the carp are dead, floating with their bellies up, for no fresh water
has been let into the pond the first thing the Arabs did was to
blow up the pumping station on the Yarkon river. The banana
plantations look like wilted steppe grass; they need watering
every ten days, and haven't been watered for- over two months.
The carp have died of suffocation, the bananas from thirst ; the
cattle have been slaughtered ; the tractors dumped into the ponds.
The settlement was founded eleven years ago ; now they have to
start again from scratch.

This pointless destruction has a particularly depressing effect
in this hard and scant country. I have seen the desperate struggle
of these pioneer settlements with the arid soil, and known the
discussions, the privations, the self-sacrifice that went into buying
a bull, or a diesel engine to get electric light. The debris of a
water-pump in the desert can be a more heart-breaking sight than
a corpse.

Sha'ar Hagolan had been evacuated before the Syrians arrived,
so they lost only the product of ten years' labour, and no lives.
Other settlements were less lucky ; their patrols when captured
or ambushed met with an appalling end. Which brings me to
that most loathsome chapter in all wars, atrocities and atrocity
propaganda. The Jews have Deir Yassin on their hands. 1 They
gave the village one hour to evacuate the women and children,

* Cf. p. 160.

224 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

and when the Arabs refused, the women and children perished
with the men in dynamited houses or by machine-gun fire in the
street fighting. But Deir Yassin owes its notoriety to the fact that
it was an exception ; and at least the Jews committed no individual
acts of sadism. Nor did the Arab Legion, whose British officers
had taught them fair treatment of prisoners of war. But elsewhere
the corpses of Jews who had fallen into Arab hands were often
found castrated and with their eyes gouged out. Israeli com-
muniques and propaganda were silent about this, for good
reason : atrocity propaganda is only effective when it relates to
events at a safe distance ; otherwise it may spread panic, as Deir
Yassin proves. But before leaving Tel Aviv I had got hold of a
collection of photographs which I had passed on to Alexis Ladas
of the United Nations Commission. They showed grinning men
in Arab uniform posing for the photographer with their bayonets
plunged into stacked heaps of naked mutilated corpses, and the
like. Ladas said that legally they were not evidence ; photographs
of this kind never are. But it is difficult to imagine a troupe of
actors making themselves up to look convincingly like Arabs,
getting hold of a pile of corpses and mutilating them to pose for
the photographer. I mention this subject with reluctance ; to
pass over it in silence would mean minimizing the bravery of
Jews going out on lonely patrols or convoy escorts. For this
sort of thing did not start with the war ; from the days of the
first Jewish settlements, when a Jew was found murdered on the
road he had nearly always been mutilated. Yet I have never heard
the matter publicly discussed among Jews in Palestine.

The fact is that one should not romanticize the gentle savage.
The disarming kindness and hospitality of primitive peoples, and
their more or less idyllic way of life, have led to a general, nostalgic
attitude towards them which passes in silence over the infantile
sadism which is almost invariably found, not only among primi-
tives in the narrower, anthropological sense, but also among rural
populations in the Balkans or round the Mediterranean.

We needed some fresh air in more than one respect. Sha'ar
Hagolan and the surroundings of Lake Tiberias are still under
sea level ; it is here that the deepest depression on the earth's
surface begins, to reach its lowest point at the Dead Sea, 75 miles
further down the Jordan. I could never decide which is the worst
of the things the settlers here are up against : the heat, the Arabs,

DAVID AND GOLIATH 225

;he mean soil or the mosquitoes and sandflies. No ideal, however
stable and profound, can make a European become physically
icclimatized to these conditions. Adaptation comes only the
natural way, with the second and third generations. And these
ire physically and mentally quite different types from their fore-
bears in Bialystok or Vienna. Israel to-day is a race in transition.
We got the fresh air as we climbed up, past Lake Hula and
the sources of the Jordan, into the foothills of snow-capped
Hermon. Hermon is the Fujiyama of Galilee; its white cap
pops up unexpectedly in the distance after every turn of the
road ; its peak unfortunately is across the frontier, in Syria. But
Metulla, the Jewish frontier village at the tip of Israel's pointing
finger, is not a bad place either. The untidy individualism of
this straggling, fifty-year-old village is the exact opposite of the
spartan drabness of the collective settlements. The people here
are a Hebrew variety of the international species of frontier
smugglers. They are mostly sturdy, patriarchal, bearded moun-
tain Jews. One of these, Brenner, is a famous local character,
who organized the defence of Metulla when Syria was under the
Vichy French, and the British proposed to evacuate the village.
He runs, among his other unspecified activities, a kind of cafe-
restaurant, but as privileged visitors we were asked into hi
private plush parlour, and thus stepped from the Syrian frontier
straight into Nalevki, Poland in the early eighteen-fifties. After
a lunch of fried eggs and goat's cheese, our party advanced across
the frontier into Syria, which begins fifty yards behind Brenner's
house, and looked for miles very empty. Perhaps we could have
walked straight to Damascus. Most frontiers in dead sectors
look the same in a war because there are no customs men about
to demonstrate national sovereignty ; and the snipers in the
inconspicuous farm-houses on both sides of no-man's-land are
usually having a siesta.

Ramat Naphtali

This is the uppermost vulnerable joint of the finger ; a small
communal settlement built around a fortress-like old Arab house
on top of a hill, which commands the western approaches to the
Jordan Valley.

Apart from intermittent heavy shelling, which lasted for
weeks, and forced the 52 settlers of Ramat Naphtali to live all
together in the Arab house, the Syrians and Lebanese made two

Q

226 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

main attacks, the first supported by six tanks. Besides the
inevitable sten-guns, the settlers had only two Hotchkiss machine-
guns, one of which was out of order when the tanks came. These
Hotchkisses, complete with ammunition, had been captured
during a Haganah raid into Vichy Syria. But the cartridge-belts
had come from Vichy factories where the French workers were
sabotaging production, and every other cartridge was a dud.

At the time the tanks arrived the 52 men and women of
Ramat Naphtali had already 15 wounded and 4 dead. That left
them with 33 able-bodied defenders in the half-crumbled Arab
house which had suffered several direct hits. They saw the tanks
slowly creeping up in the distance, in single file on the narrow
mountain road from Manara; and then something very Pales-
tinian happened. They heard the hum of a plane one of the
tiny two-seater training planes, a dozen of which constituted at
that time the Israeli air force, affectionately known as "primuses"
after a popular type of petrol-cookers which are noisy, smelly
and frequently explode. The primus circled low over the house,
and the settlers could see that it carried a woman passenger. It
was, as they later learnt, Lorna Wingate, widow of the " Lawrence
of the Hebrews ". She waved and theii dropped a small parcel. It
avas a Bible in Hebrew which Wingate had carried on him through
the Burma campaign where he had met his death.

The tank battle developed much on the same pattern as in
Dagania. Before they could deploy from the narrow dirt-track
which is the sole approach to the settlement, the first tank was im-
mobilized by armour-piercing bullets. The others promptly began
to back, some by driving in reverse gear, some by turning round.
Presently the first tank awoke from its torpor and took its place
in the rear of the retreating column. They were never seen again.

After the attack had been repulsed, the settlers sent out a
night patrol to reconnoitre. One man was wounded and fell into
Arab hands. His body was found the next morning by another
patrol, with the eyes gouged out and their orbits filled with his
testicles. When he was carried inside the house his wife could
not be prevented from looking at the corpse ; she committed
suicide the same night.

During the next lull, the settlers of Ramat Naphtali were
evacuated and Haganah took over the defence of what remained
of their stronghold. On June 10, the day before the first truce,

DAVID AND GOLIATH 22?

the Arabs made their last determined attempt to storm the place.
They succeeded in taking an advance position in which twelve
Jews were caught and killed. After that the Jews counter-
attacked and drove them off. We were led to a pathetically ugly
little communal grave with the names of the twelve dead men
scribbled over a wooden star of David. It was stuck on a pole
into the loose rubble over the grave; and through the loose
rubble oozed the sickly-sweet smell which we are beginning to
know too well. There are also a number of Arab corpses still
about in the fields, unburnt and unburied in the heavy heat.

A fortnight before, we had met one of the evacuated settlers
of Ramat Naphtali convalescing in the Sanatorium on Mount
Carmel. He had told us long stories about the fighting, and
particularly about the Arab way of launching an attack, which
at the time had sounded like malicious exaggerations, but which
now, after this tour of the Galilean battlefield, dovetailed with
what we had seen and heard like two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

Chain smoking on the Sanatorium terrace, his sensitive, un-
soldierly face lit up from time to time by the flame of a match,
he had told us how, during the first attacks, they had all been
nervous, and had opened fire at 500 yards. Then they had found
to their amazement that whenever one of the attackers in the line
was hit he threw his arms into the air in a theatrical fashion and
yelled." Allah ", whereupon the line on his right and left came
to a standstill, and, shouting to each other, started running back.
Now and then one of their clumsy armoured cars advanced, put
itself between the stockade and a wounded man, pulled the latter
inside and drove back. This was repeated several times; a
hesitant advance, one or two " Allahs ", reflux, armoured car
acting as an ambulance. The Arabs never tried to dig in at the
place to which they had advanced. The defenders, becoming
gradually accustomed to these strange methods, let the Arabs
come up to within less than 200 yards, and took a heavy toll
of them. After a few hours the Lebanese became fed up with
the whole thing and vanished from sight.

All this recalled like an echo a number of episodes from the
Lawrence- Feisal campaign. As far as I can remember, the
number of the Arab casualties suffered in any of those skirmishes

228 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

against Turkish posts on the Hedjaz railway, which in their
ensemble constitute the Revolt in the Desert, never exceeded five.
Lawrence had to be careful to avoid casualties, because the sight
of a single man wounded or dead would demoralize a whole unit,
who would simply shoulder their rifles and ride home on their
camels. The Lebanese have little in common with the Bedouin
of the Peninsula, except that, like all Arabs, they like their battles
noisy but bloodless. On the whole, it is a very sensible attitude.
If wars must be, they should at least be bloodless. In this respect
the comic opera is certainly preferable to the Greek tragedy.

Of all the Arab armies which invaded Palestine only one was
a serious fighting force in the modern sense : the Transjordan
Legion. The explanation why this was so is simple : the Legion
was trained and led by British officers, equipped with modern
British arms, operated by a British staff. It was a small but
extremely efficient army Britain's shining toy in the orient.
Had the Lebanese and Syrians been as thoroughly trained, and
led by British commanders, there is little doubt that, despite
Wingate's bible and the self-sacrifice of the Jewish settlers,
Galilee would have been overrun. It was not merely out of
resentment or querulousness that Israel raised such a fuss about
Glubb Pasha and his Anglo-Hashimite Legion. Had it been
withdrawn from the battlefield the war in Palestine would have
been over in a week.

5

Even so, the periods of actual fighting between the Security
Council's truce gongs were short. The first round lasted less
than four weeks : from invasion day on May 15 to the beginning
of the first truce on June 1 1. The second round lasted ten days :
from the end of the first truce on July 9 to the beginning of the
second truce on July 18. After that there were only some minor,
and two major, flare-ups : the campaigns in the Negeb in October
and December.

The main events of the first round have already been de-
scribed : the advance of the Israeli Army along the coast to the
Lebanese frontier ; the defeat of the Syro-Lebanese attempts to
invade Galilee ; the loss of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Arab
Legion ; the stalemate on the central front at Latrun ; the
successful defence of the Negeb settlements which the Egyptian
columns had bypassed ; and the halting of these columns on the

DAVID AND GOLIATH 22Q

southern outskirts of Jerusalem and on the boundaries of the
Jewish coastal belt.

During this first and decisive round, Haganah, which -had
been transformed overnight from an underground resistance
movement into a would-be army and was simultaneously assailed
on five fronts, had to rely mainly on psychological bluff and
improvisation. The secrecy in which everything concerning the
newborn army was shrouded, and which so much exasperated
U.N. observers and foreign correspondents, including ourselves,
was only partly due to the hangover of conspiratorial habits. The
main reason for banning all visits to the so-called fronts was the
necessity to hide the Jewish army's weakness, and the fact that
in a number of sectors no front line existed at all beyond some
scattered observer posts. The real front, it should be emphasized
again, was the ensemble of the communal settlements. The rest of
the fighting, except in the sector facing Glubb's Legion at Latrun,
was improvised guerilla warfare and ingenious bluff.

As a last example, take the story of Sarafand. This huge army
camp, with billets for a garrison of 30,000, less than ten miles
from Tel Aviv, was to be turned over on evacuation to the Jews
by agreement between the British Commander and the Jewish
Agency, against a consideration of 600,000. This agreement
was overruled by a decision from London. The handing over
to the Jews was to take place on May 18 ; on May 15 the British
evacuated the camp, which was immediately occupied by troops
of the Arab Legion. The camp was protected all round by ex-
tensive minefields ; a Haganah communique on May 20 alleged
that before leaving the British had pointed out to Glubb's forces
the only safe passage leading into the camp. However that may
be, on invasion day the Arab Legion was in possession of the most
important army camp in the immediate vicinity of Tel Aviv.
They were ousted from it three days later by a typical romantic
stunt of Haganah. A number of their picked men climbed on
the night of May 18 into the tall eucalyptus trees surrounding the
camp, fixed ropes on high branches, and by means of these swung
themselves, Tarzan-like, into the camp. The Legionaries, seized
by wild panic, took to their heels. The camp was taken at the
price of one Haganah casualty.

Haifa fell to a new version of the trumpets of Jericho ; Safed
to the spectre of the " adum" ; a lone settlement in the Negeb

230 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

was saved by putting up signs with DANGER MINES, which per-
suaded the Egyptians, after one look, quietly to bypass it;
Dagania held its ground with molotov-cocktails ; Ramat Naphtali
with a stuttering Hotchkiss ; the defenders of the new city of
Jerusalem had four 2-inch mortars which they carted round on
trucks from one sector to another. Israel's air force consisted at
that time of a dozen " primuses " ; its navy of two tiny corvettes
and a Police launch ; its makeshift armoured cars looked like
cardboard stage-props ; the only mass-weapon of its infantry
were sten-guns apart from which it started the war with
exactly 7000 modern rifles. From whatever angle one looks at it,
the all too obvious comparison cannot be avoided : it was David's
guile which brought Goliath down.

During the four weeks of truce between tlie first and second
rounds the situation had radically changed. The reasons which
made the truce into a farce have been pointed out before ; and
Israel had no scruples about getting round the arms embargo,
which, if taken at the letter, would have reduced her to complete
helplessness. Her purchasing agents bought and smuggled arms
from wherever they could in Europe and America. The bulk of
them came, with Russian blessing, by a regular air-lift from
Czechoslovakia ; the political implications of this development
will be discussed later. The fact is that when the second round
started on July 9 the Jews were still inferior in arms to their
adversaries ; but the margin had been narrowed down consider-
ably and was compensated by their superior initiative and organ-
izing power. In the ten days of renewed fighting they scored
decisive successes on the central front by taking Lydda, with
Palestine's only large airport, the key town of Ramleh, and a dozen
or so strategically important villages, including Ras el Ain, with
the pumping station for Jerusalem's water supply. The central
plain east of Tel Aviv was cleared, the Arab Legion pushed back
into the Samarian hills, its hold on Latrun made extremely pre-
carious ; most important of all, a new highway from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem had been opened. Simultaneously in the north Nazareth
was taken, almost without resistance ; the mopping up of the re-
maining Arab forces in the pocket between the two fingers in Galilee
was completed during the next truce, in inconspicuous brackets so
to speak. Israel's new air force retaliated against Arab air raids on
Tel Aviv by bombing Damascus, Cairo, Amman and the Egyptian
base at El Arish. It was a clear all-round victory to the new State.

DAVID AND GOLIATH 231

During these crucial days the Arab Legion was conspicuously
restrained in its actions. The area round Lydda and Ramleh was
yielded with little fight; it became increasingly evident that
Abdullah, having achieved his limited objectives with the occupa-
tion of the Arab parts of Palestine, was no longer interested in the
war. The total strength of the Legion amounted to only about
14,000 ; it had already suffered considerable losses ; if after the
impending break-up of the Arab League Abdullah was to establish
his hegemony in the Levant and annex Arab Palestine in the teeth
of jhe furious opposition of his neighbours, the Legion must be
preserved intact and suffer no further losses.

When the second truce started, the Arab League no longer
existed except on paper. Not only Transjordan, but also Syria,
the Lebanon and Iraq had in fact pulled out of the war, in spite
of all declamations to the contrary which became the more
flamboyant the less they were backed up by acts. During the
two short and spectacular Israeli campaigns in the south, which
flung the Egyptians out of Palestine territory except for a few
isolated pockets, the other Arab States watched with folded hands
and hardly disguised glee the rout of their Egyptian ally.

In altogether thirty-seven days of officially legalized warfare
the Jews fought for their independence and won it. For the first
time since Bar Kochba's revolt against the Romans they were not
passive victims, but active promoters of history.

There are few legends which appeal more profoundly to
human imagination than the story of David's accepting the chal-
lenge of Goliath and triumphing over him. Yet from the close
view of the ej e-witnesses it must have been a rather grotesque scene
when the nimble little Semitic tribesman pirouetted round the
half-idiotic giant, victim of his pituitary glands, and, amid the jeers
and cheers of the bystanders, knocked the poor brute out with
a jagged stone from his sling. Historic justice, we said earlier, is a
function of Time and the scale of Values applied ; historic gran-
deur is an equally relative concept, dependent on distance and the
angle of perspective. It is accordingly pointless to ask whether this
was a grandiose or a puerile war, a drama or a comedy. It was, like
all historic events, both ; and which side of the picture is put more
into relief depends entirely on the observer's system of reference.

232 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

To the distant reader of the tabloid Press at his breakfast
table it looked as if history had at last met Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer's most ambitious dream by matching the Sons of the
Desert in a Holy War against the resurrected Maccabeans. As
a close shot, to keep to the cameraman's language, it turned out
to be a phoney war of small and hopelessly inefficient bands of
Levantine mercenaries skirmishing against improvised Jewish
home-guard units, with a great amount of bragging and bombast
on both sides. But finally, when one got even closer, and the
scene dissolved into a slow-motion view of a microscopic land-
scape, there remained a few hundred people like Yehuda Sprung,
settler in Dagania, wife and two children, who, when for the
first time in his life he saw a real tank in action, did not run
away but threw a bottle at it from ten yards ; and thus, in a half-
dazed state, crossed the equinoxial line which divides the trivial
from the historic plane. The Punch and Judy scene between
the shepherd and the giant ; the defence of Ramat Naphtali ;
and the forlorn wanderings of Stendhal's young Fabrice across
the vast, absurd muddle which he later learnt was the Battle of
Waterloo, are all located on this invisible dividing line. The
contrast between the tiny scale of the events described here,
and their global resonance, underlines the general ambiguity of
all historic episodes in their transition from the trivial familiarity
of the Present to the heroic perspective of the Past.

Ill

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM

WHEN the British evacuated Jerusalem on May 14 it had already
been cut off from the rest of Jewish Palestine for several weeks.
It remained a besieged city until June 9, when the Israeli Army
succeeded in completing a new stretch of highway, bypassing
the Arab positions at Latrun the famous " Burma Road ".

The Old City of Jerusalem, surrounded by a massive wall built
in the sixteenth century by Suleiman the Magnificent on antique
foundations, occupies a relatively small area in the north-eastern
corner of the town. It has a Moslem quarter, a Christian quarter,
a Jewish quarter and an Armenian quarter. The Jewish quarter,
more a ghetto than a residential district, was from the beginning
of the civil war virtually cut off from the modern town. The
modern town has a population of roughly 100,000 Jews and
70,000 Arabs. By and large the Arabs are concentrated in the
older quarters to the north-west, adjacent to the Old City, while
the modern Jewish residential quarters have spread out mainly
to the south.

Immediately after the British evacuation, on May 14 and 15,
Haganah occupied all the strategic centres in the modern town,
including the Arab quarters Musrara and Sheikh Jarrah. Only
the Old City, excluding its Jewish ghetto, remained in Arab hands.

During those two decisive days, when the Arabs fled in panic
as they had done in Haifa, Jaffa and Safed, Haganah could
probably have broken into the Old City and completed the
conquest of the capital. This would have meant employing the
same methods which they had used in the Arab quarters of
the other towns : the ruthless dynamiting of block after block in
the rabbit-warren of bazaars and blind alleys, until the panic
had reached sufficient dimensions to end all resistance. But
that warren contains the Holy Sepulchre, the street named Via
Dolorosa, and a number of other monuments of doubtful historic
authenticity and aesthetic merit, but of great symbolic value to
the Christian world. Curiously enough, had Israel decided to
take that course, the Moslem sanctuaries would hardly have been

233

234 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

in danger, as both the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque
form a separate enclave walled off against the Old City proper.
It was more than anything else the reluctance to damage the
Christian Holy Places, and to bear the onus of having done this,
which restrained the Jews from attempting to storm the Old
City, and made them forsake their chance of gaining complete
control of the capital.

Three days later that chance no longer existed. On May 18
an armoured column of the Arab Legion reached Jerusalem from
the north. It was commanded by Brigadier Leash, a former
British Police officer in Palestine. During the next ten days the
Christian commanded of the Legion did unto the Jews precisely
what the Jews had refrained from doing unto them : they bom-
barded the Jewish quarter in the Old City to smithereens and
dynamited its Holy of Holies, the Hurva Synagogue.

On May 28 the surviving defenders of the ghetto surrendered
to the legion which had by now established its batteries of
loo-pounders in the midst of the hallowed sanctuaries of the
Christian world, and had begun to bombard at its ease the Jewish
quarters in modem Jerusalem. The bombardment continued
during the whole siege of the city. The Vatican, which had so
emphatically insisted on the internationalization of the Holy
Places, raised no objection to their use as an artillery base. The
other Churches were equally silent.

A little less than a week after the British evacuation, and just
after Glubb's panzers had begun the shelling of the Jewish quarter,
a high official of the Israeli Foreign Office, stuck in beleaguered
Jerusalem, jotted down his impressions for the benefit of his
colleagues in distant Tel Aviv. He was good enough to allow me
to publish this document, though without mentioning his name. 1

REPORT FROM JERUSALEM

Not /or publication

igih May, 1948

" Sk days ago the British were still a factor in Jerusalem.
Fox-Strangways was still on the phone, soldiers were guarding

1 The Consular Truce Commission referred to in these notes was one of
die diplomatic improvisations of Lake Success. As this Commission never
produced any results whatsoever, mention of it has so far been charitably omitted
from this chronicle.

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 235

the security zones. On May I4th all the British pulled out,
and since then they have been dead. They no longer exist even
as a concept, and it requires an effort of the imagination to
convince oneself that there was ever such a thing as a Mandatory
Government. It was impossible to foresee that such a complete
change could come about overnight.

" Two hours after the British left, we drove from the Jewish
Agency to the French Consulate through King George Avenue,
Wauchope Street and Julian's Way. Heavy tiring had already
started, and bullets were flying across King George Avenue.
But this made less of an impression than the utter emptiness
of the whole area. Haganah men had taken the place of the
Warwickshires at the entrance to Zone B, but apart from them
there was not a living soul in sight the whole way. The entrance
to the zone in Julian's Way was completely deserted, and a
glance down to Mamillah Road and the foot of Princess Mary
Avenue revealed nothing. The King David compound looked
like a desert. Ail the barbed wire was still in place, but nothing
looks as dead as barbed wire that no longer serves any purpose.
We were in a no-man's-land. The British had gone, and there
was nothing except the Red Cross sign on the Y.M.C.A. peri-
meter to show that anyone was taking their place.

" The atmosphere at the French Consulate was nervous and
tense. The Truce Commission was in session. The presence
of a Belgian, a Frenchman, an American, a Norwegian and a
Spaniard symbolized the United Nations. Every few minutes
the telephone rang to pass some piece of news, to tell the
Belgian consul about the fate of his wounded driver, to bring
messages from the Arabs, to announce that the Polish consul
had disappeared. But it was not only this that made the quiet
conduct of negotiations impossible. Bullets were whizzing
past or hitting the building all the time. Suddenly a Red Cross
man came in panting with the latest news from Kfar Etzion.
Repeated efforts were made to arrange a cease-fire for the Arab
representatives, who claimed they were unable to reach the
Consulate because of the heavy fighting. Meanwhile an aged
manservant went round offering arak. The Belgian consul kept
twittering, the Frenchman jumping up and down nervily. The
American looked solemn, representing the majesty of his
government rather than the United Nations, while the Spaniard
maintained a posture of prayer and contemplation. When
accusations of bad faith started flying like bullets, while it was
clear that nothing effective was being done, there was nothing
for it but to go. It was like a nightmare, and the drive back
was not much better.

236 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" The French Consulate, in an exposed position overlooking
Jaffa Gate and Mount Zion, is not the best possible venue for
truce negotiations. There are something like fifty people
permanently on the premises, including the consul's six chil-
dren, whose presence in this danger zone adds to their father's
nervousness. The Consulate is without electricity, without
water or wine, without bread, and now also without a telephone.
As its radio installation is out of order as well, it is almost
completely cut off from the outside world. The only carrier
of food and news is a Jewish member of the consular staff who
sallies forth at times like the dove from Noah's ark. The
consul, incidentally, has reverted to a practice of Turkish times
by starting his own postal service. Quai d'Orsay revenue stamps
have been overprinted ' Postes fransaises. 20 milliemes ', and
there is a special Jerusalem postmark.

" The work of the Truce Commission has been made diffi-
cult by a number of circumstances. The Arabs have been
reluctant to meet them, and have found all sorts of excuses for
putting them off. There is considerable rivalry and ill-feeling
between the Commission and the Red Cross, which has pro-
posals and ambitions of its own. On the Commission itself
there is something of a split between the American and the
other two members. At least as long as the British were here,
the American was much closer to their point of view than his
two colleagues. To add to the Commission's difficulties, com-
munications between them and Lake Success are rather pre-
carious, depending as they do on the vagaries of the American
consul's radio teletype. In consequence partly of these diffi-
culties, but mostly of the difficulties inherent in the situation
itself, the Truce Commission has so far achieved nothing. It is
true, however, at least of the French and Belgian members,
and certainly of the Spanish and Norwegian members of the
U.N. staff, that they would be happy to achieve something if
they only knew how.

" Morale among the Jews of Jerusalem has not been good.
They have been in heaven one day, and down in the dumps
the next. This perpetual see-saw is a constant strain on their
nerves. The lack of electricity in the city makes it practically
impossible to listen to the wireless, and very difficult to print
newspapers. The consequent dearth of reliable information
breeds rumour and rumour, as Virgil said, is the swiftest of
all evils. It does not matter whether a rumour is good or bad ;
there are always plenty of mouths to repeat it, and plenty of
ears to listen. The fear of the unknown is also a powerful factor
in depressing morale. Only a small number of Jerusalemites

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 237

knows the effect of artillery shelling, or what a tank is and
can do. The Arab Legion has become such a legend, partly
owing to our own propaganda against it, that its very name
installs fear even among people who ought to know better.
But above all it is the consciousness of being cut off from the
rest of Jewish Palestine that has a wearing effect on people's
nerves. If only they could listen-in to Tel Aviv Radio, or if a
few Jewish planes appeared overhead, they would not feel so
lonely. As things are, even the leaders of the community do
not do enough to set a good example.

" The Jewish civilian authorities have, on the whole, solved
distribution problems fairly well. Fair rations are issued to all
through the shops, while water is brought to the people's houses.
There is a good deal of queue-ing, which in the hot weather
and under fire makes the housewife's lot a hard one, and doubt-
less some of it could be avoided with better organization.
People grumble but this is inevitable under the circum-
stances, and anyway their inalienable right. But they are
appreciative of the fact that basic needs are still met : there is
no real shortage of bread, and of water I have already written.
In fact, if it were not for the shelling and the lack of news and
one or two other things, people would probably be fairly happy.
When it comes to a really stiff test, they are likely to show more
guts than most observers would give them credit for.

" The shelling of Jerusalem, which has gone on pretty
constantly for several days, seems to have no purpose except to
wear down the nerves of the civilian population. It does not
draw off soldiers from street fighting or guard duties, and its
damage to buildings is relatively slight. People are getting
used to being shelled, but they undoubtedly suffer through
loss of their night's sleep, which is bad for the temper and
reduces efficiency.

" Communications between Jerusalem and the outside world
are bad. There are a few Jewish radio transmitters working,
but all efforts have so far failed to provide a transmitter for press
purposes. Newspaper correspondents have to rely either on
the irregular and unpredictable aeroplane service, or on the
radio facilities provided by the American and British consulates.
As a result, the Jerusalem story has not been adequately told in
the world's press for the past week. Correspondents, moreover,
find it difficult to move about ; a group of British correspondents
have shut themselves up in St. George's Close, where they
obtain no first-hand news of any kind. The suspension of
communications of a more personal kind has also been Jbadly
felt. It is now nearly three weeks since postal services broke

238 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

down, and the new Jewish post office has not yet succeeded in
forwarding letters in bulk to addresses outside Jerusalem. Most
families have not heard from their relatives in other parts of
Palestine for a long time ; this in a time of general strain, and
particularly of worry about sons and daughters who are away
fighting, has been a real trial for thousands. Never was the
importance of orderly communications more clearly shown than
in the phase through which Jerusalem is at present passing.

" The consular corps has been having a trying time. Consuls
are no longer accredited to anybody, their exequaturs are not
valid ; they are living in a vacuum, obsessed with the same
worries about food and water and personal safety that afflict
the general population. In their plight the telephone is their
only weapon ajid comfort, and they keep ringing each other
up to learn the latest news. The Polish consul recently spent
four hours in a ditch under Arab fire, until the Haganah came
to rescue him. The British consul, soon to be British Political
Representative, is the latest addition to their ranks. He has
installed himself in a building at the Damascus Gate, effectively
inaccessible from the Jewish quarters. His staff are largely
recruited from among members of the former Palestine Govern-
ment, and something of that Government's tone has been
noticeable in their communications to the Jewish Agency. . . ."

For three weeks after this report was written the hundred
thousand Jews of Jerusalem remained cut off from the world,
and under constant shell-fire from the Old City ; the average
number of casualties in the civilian population was twenty a day.
My first opportunity to get into Jerusalem came by a lucky chance
just before we set out for Galilee. I quote from my diary.

Monday ; June 14

This morning I went shopping, and on the way back to the
hotel ran into Alexis of the U.N. Commission, who was just going
to inspect the famous new road to Jerusalem. I got into his car
with the blue-and-white U.N.O. pennant, which from a distance
looks like the Zionist flag.

This new life-line to Jerusalem is the biggest sensation of the
war. It is called the Burma Road of Israel, was built in secret,
and opened three days ago for military traffic. Haganah have
been working on it for about three weeks. It starts at Hulda,
which is inside Israel's boundaries and solidly held by the Israeli
Army, and joins the old road at Bab el Wad from where onward
to Jerusalem it runs through Jewish-controlled territory. The

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 239

" Burma Road " is thus a connecting link between the two separate
chunks of Jewish Palestine. It was built across Arab territory,
and in some stretches at a distance of less than two miles from
Arab positions. All work was done at night, in darkness and
silence, literally under the nose of the Arab army. Two nights
before the truce came into effect the first convoy with supplies
reached besieged Jerusalem.

We drove through Rishon le Zion, Ness Ziona and Rehovot
dreary, dusty villages founded in pre-zionist days, which look
as if some Jewish suburb in Poland had been flown over on a
magic carpet and dumped into the Judaean plain.

At Rehovot we took a secondary road to Hulda, headquarters
of the 7th Israeli Brigade, and starting point of the new road.
Hulda is one of the collective settlements which suffered most
from Arab raids during the 1936-39 riots, and from British raids
during the period of the arms search actions. 1 It has been heavily
bombarded by the Egyptians; the Children's House was de-
stroyed by a direct hit a few hours after the children had been
evacuated ; the pride of the settlement, its imported pedigree
cattle, were nearly all killed* There are some Communes in
Palestine which seem to have been visited by all the afflictions of
Job ; usually these produce the most lively characters and the
friendliest atmosphere. We had lunch in the communal dining
hall, now transformed into an officers' mess, with the Brigadier,
Rabinowitch, who was Shertok's military adviser at Lake Success,
and Major Peter Wolf from London, who formerly served with
the British forces in Palestine. When he was demobilized he
said to his commanding officer : " Now my second war starts/*
** Whom are you going to fight now ? " asked the Colonel.
" You," said Wolf, " with the Jewish army."

After a very frugal lunch we left our posh ILN.O. car behind
and crowded into a jeep to negotiate the new road, with Peter
Wolf in charge and an army driver at the wheel. This driver
turned out to be a Hungarian, by name of Berger, who had once
been goal-keeper of the champion football team " Hungaria ".
Before the war he was a driver with a bus company which ran a
passenger service across the Negeb desert, while on Shabbath
he kept goal for the Maccabi in Tel Aviv. As we drove in a cloud
of dust along the rough track of the Burma Road he described to
me in Hungarian how it had been built :

* Cf. pp. 71, 87-

240 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" We couldn't use any light except electric pocket-torches,
and couldn't use drills or bulldozers, otherwise the Arabs over
there would have found out what was going on." (" Over there "
was a ridge less than two miles away overlooking the valley
through which we were driving.) " The boys had to tear the
rock apart with^ their finger-nails. The only tools they were
allowed to use were small chisels and wooden mallets to split
cracks into the rock. Then there was the question of the dust,
which shows in moonlight like a white cloud in the desert. We
were very short of oil, but we had to pour gallons of it over the
road to make the dust settle. One day an Arab patrol turned up
in the wadi which was on the projected track of the new road.
The boys went out in three jeeps to chase them away. Only one
jeep came back. But no more Arabs were seen in the wadi."

The road became worse ; in fact it could hardly be called a
road at all. We bumped up and down slopes and wadis, the jeep
swaying like a camel and sometimes leaning over at forty-five
degrees. Then we came to the critical patch, about which we
had been warned beforehand, a very steep incline of sand and
loose rocks about a hundred yards long. It was only negotiable
downhill in the direction of Jerusalem ; on the return journey
trucks, cars and even jeeps had to be pulled up the slope on
ropes by a giant caterpillar bulldozer. As we went down the
slope we were very nearly overturned, and Alexis performed an
acrobatic jump out of the jeep and down the slope into a shrub of
camel-thistles. This we found the more damaging to the prestige
of U.N.O. as the rest of us, ensconced in the back of the jeep,
were unable to extricate ourselves. In the opposite direction an
enormous bus was being hoisted up the slope by the bulldozer.
It was a fantastic sight. The front wheels of the bus were in the
air, and the bulldozer looked like a giant terrier shaking and drag-
ging along a giant rat by its teeth.

On the other side of this wadi the road improved. About two
miles away we could see the monastery and police station of
Latrun ; the Arabs holding it were no doubt watching us through
glasses and grinding their teeth. They couldn't shoot at us
because of the truce ; and if hostilities are resumed, Arab artillery
may theoretically dominate the road, but to hit a moving target
at night will still remain difficult for them.

We rejoined the old Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road at Bab el Wad.
As only fifteen miles of excellent road lay between us and Jeru-

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 241

salem, we decided to let permits look after themselves and to drive
on into the city. The number of civilians who had, by one means
or another, got into Jerusalem since the beginning of the war
could be counted on one's fingers.

In less than twenty minutes we passed the last check-post
before the city, and after an absence of four years I saw my
beloved Jerusalem again. We drove in through Jaffa Road, past
the familiar landmarks : the ruins of the modern blocks in Ben
Yehuda Street which British Mosleyites blew up in 1947 ; the
wing chipped off the King David Hotel which the Jews blew up
in 1946 ; and so on. That is the kind of landmark which gives
the atmosphere of modern Jerusalem ; the Old City in its im-
mortal glory and beauty we were not allowed to see. Incidentally
this is the first time since the destruction of the Temple that
Jews have been prevented from worshipping at the giant stones
of the Wailing Wall, last relic of Israel's ancient statehood.

Through devious routes, bye-passing road blocks and miles
of barbed wire which have turned Jerusalem into a new version
of the labyrinth of Minos, we reached the Y.M.C.A. building,
now the seat of the extra-territorial Red Cross mission. There
we left Alexis to see his U.N.O. colleagues, and drove on to the
house of Gershon Agronsky, editor of the Palestine Post. His wife
Ethel gave us tea, one cup per capita the Arabs have cut
Jerusalem's water supply, and the ration per head per day is two
gallons for all purposes washing, cooking, drinking, laundry,
and everything else. Normally at this time of year the Jewish
Jerusalemite takes half a dozen showers a day and drinks at least
a gallon of tea and lemonade.

We apologized for not having brought any supplies, as our
visit was improvised, and asked what we should bring next time.
Ethel said a lemon and a carrot ; Gershon 'said cigarettes. They
were hungry for food, hungrier for cigarettes, and hungriest for
news. As so often under abnormal conditions of life, psycho-
logical needs seem to reverse the hierarchy of physiological needs.
Jerusalem has had for weeks no mail and no newspapers from
outside. When there is enough fuel to run the printing press,
Agronsky turns out a single sheet edition of the Palestine Post
based on monitored radio news and short-wave messages from
Tel Aviv. But there is always room for the famous " Column
One by David Courtney ", alias Roy Elston. Elston turned
up while we were having tea ; he is Renter's former Jerusalem

R

242 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

correspondent, who gave up his job and was ostracized by the
English colony for throwing in his lot with the Jews and attacking
British policy in his brilliant leaders in the Post. Their pathos
and invective is in the direct line of the great tradition of English
pamphleteers, from Swift through Lamb to the early Michael
Foot ; coming from an English gentile they had a considerable
effect in keeping up Jewish morale during the critical days.
Meeting Elston again after three years, it struck me that he looks
the typical Englishman turned native he is sunburnt, happy,
and beginning to develop a distinctly Semitic look. While we
were talking, Alexis came in slightly shaken : on his way from the
Y.M.C.A. to the French Consulate he had been shot at and
narrowly missed by an Arab sniper from the Old City. If this
isn't a breach of the truce, I don't know what is ; but we had to
promise that the story would be off the record. Half of what
goes on concerning this country is off the record anyway : the
British arms deliveries to the Arabs and the desperate efforts of
British diplomacy to keep them from collapsing and the war
going ; the Czech and French arms deliveries to the Jews ; the
tug of war between the White House and the State Department
which causes a continuous series of earthquakes and eruptions
in American policy ; the fatuous pretence of the United Nations
who know that the truce is broken every day in every way by all
parties directly and indirectly concerned. The Holy Land is
becoming a kind of ethical atom-pile whose poisoned radiations
are spreading in all directions over the world.

Almost every single house in the Jewish residential quarters
of the new city bears some mark of the Legion's shellfire. The
Agronskys have worked out that, measured by the scale of the
population of London, Jerusalem has had 2000 killed and 10,000
injured per week since the siege began. When the fighting started
Haganah had only four two-inch mortars, and they used the old
trick of carting them about all over the city to give the impression
that they had more. One Haganah officer said with a melancholy
grin : " King Abdullah once boasted that for every shell the
Jews fired, the Arabs fired ten. I wish that were true ! "

On the way back we gave a lift to a Palmach girl who turned out
to be the daughter of my old friend Ludwig Blum, the Jerusalem
landscape painter. What a small country ; I seem to know every
other face in the streets. Blum is all right except for a hole in the
ceiling of his studio made by a grenade which destroyed ten of

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 243

his pictures. But as it never rains in Jerusalem before the end of
October, the hole doesn't bother him.

On second thoughts, what I have said about knowing every
other person in the street used to be true, but no longer is. Now
that young soldiers dominate the life of the town the whole
character of the population seems to have changed. Particularly
striking is the high number of dark-skinned young men of oriental
type Sephardis and Yemenites who, before the war, lived
mostly in the poorer quarters. Many of them belong to the
formerly terrorist groups, Irgun and Stern, whose cadres are now
being gradually integrated into Haganah. But the trouble is that
Irgun and the Stern Group have so far only accepted subordina-
tion to Government and Army in the territory of Israel proper
in other words inside the boundaries drawn up by U.N.O.
and Jerusalem, which in theory is going to be internationalized, is
outside those boundaries. Hence the Irgun and Stern Group
claim autonomy for their units here, which leads to permanent
friction between them and Haganah. On the surface this may
seem merely an internal squabble, but the matter is more serious :
for the two extremist groups will never agree to renounce Jeru-
salem, and in this respect the majority of the population is on
their side. The Government will either have to withdraw its
original assent to the internationalization of the capital and claim
at least the new town for Israel, 1 or the old prophecy will come
true and, having forsaken Jerusalem, her right hand will forget
its cunning.

There is little doubt that they will choose the first course
and in one form or another annex modern Jerusalem ; and then
international quarrelling, haggling and mediation will start all
over again. No other town has caused such continuous waves
of killing, rape and unholy misery over the centuries as this
Holy City.

For those, however, who are inside it/ matters appear much
simpler ; constantly exposed to its radiations, they live in holy
blindness. There is an old Jewish legend : when, after their
long siege, the Legions of Titus put fire to the Temple, the
Priests threw the keys of Jerusalem high into the air and cried
to God : " Stretch out Thy hand, for Thou art now the guardian
of these keys ". And in the midst of the flames a hand was seen
reaching down from the sky ; its fingers closed over the keys and
1 This the Israeli Government did a few weeks later.

244 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

took them. On May 20, 1948, when the Arab Legion began its
attack on the Jews in the Old City, among the many rumours of
war there was one passed on among the old men, from bearded
mouth to side-locked ear : the ancient keys of the City gates had
been found by the Commander of Haganah, in the courtyard of
the Hurva Synagogue. Thus the Lord, having sulked with the
Jews since A.D. 71, had at last given Jerusalem back to them.

The young in Israel, whether marxist, democrat or chauvinist,
are spiritually nourished from the same source of faith. Faith of
this type can not only move mountains but at times become a
stronger political factor than oilfields ; and speak in a stronger
voice than materialist dialectics.

IV

THE END OF TERRORISM AND THE
CONSOLIDATION OF STATE AUTHORITY

DURING the last years of the British Mandate and the first
months in the life of Israel, the rivalry between the two main
resistance movements, Haganah and Irgun, seemed not only to
endanger the consolidation of authority in the young State, but
also to threaten eventual civil war.

This tension reached its climax in the tragedy of the Altalena
during the last week of June 1948. The episode is recorded here
in some detail because it is the closing chapter in the history of
Irgun, and in fact of the whole Jewish terrorist movement. It was
the most painful and violent shock to the sensitive structure of the
new State, and the crucial test of its political maturity. Whatever
the rights or wrongs of the case, the test ended in the voluntary
self-liquidation of the terrorist dissidents and the decisive con-
solidation of the Government's authority.

The Altalena, a cargo boat of 5500 tons, carrying 900 Jewish
war volunteers and a considerable quantity of arms, had been
purchased and equipped by the Irgun ZVai LeumL " Altalena 3>
was the pseudonym under which Vladimir Jabotinsky J wrote his
literary works ; the ship's name was a homage to his memory.
She sailed from Port de Bouc near Marseilles on June 1 1 , the day
the first truce came into effect.

While she slowly made her way across the Mediterranean,
dodging detection by day and travelling at night, representatives
of Irgun and of the Israeli Government pursued arduous negotia-
tions about the disposal of the arms. The Government insisted
that all arms should be surrendered to them against financial
compensation. The representatives of Irgun insisted that 20 per
cent of the arms should go to Jerusalem, and that of the remaining
80 per cent half should be earmarked for the Irgun battalions in
the Israeli Army.

It should be explained that shortly before the proclamation

1 See Book Three, Chapter I : jfabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement.

246 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the State, Haganah and Irgun had entered into an agreement
which stipulated the dissolution of Irgun as a military organization
and the gradual incorporation, within a limited period of time, of
Irgun's seven battalions (about 5000 men) under their own officers,
into Haganah, the official Army of Israel. At the time of the
Altalena episode half of these battalions had already been incor-
porated into Haganah ; but, rightly or wrongly, Irgun complained
that their units were being discriminated against in the distribu-
tion of arms and equipment. Hence their insistence that 40 per
cent of the Altalena arms go to these units.

In itself this demand sounds not unreasonable in view of the
fact that the arms had been purchased and transported through
the efforts of Irgun alone. But from the Government's point of
view it implied a challenge to the exclusive authority of State
and Army. The very term " dissidents " had originated through
Irgun's refusal to accept the authority of the Jewish Agency ;
now that the latter had become the legal Government it was
intolerable that a group within the State should act as an inde-
pendent agent for importing arms and make conditions as to their
disposal.

Thus the core of the conflict was a matter of prestige between
two formerly rival underground movements, an extremist minority
and a moderate majority, the latter of which had now attained
the dignity of official Government and Army. Formally, Irgun
accepted this state of affairs by agreeing to its own dissolution as
a military force. But past grievances kept rankling both among
the leaders and in the rank and file. The majority of the leaders
of Irgun, including Benjamin, the commander of the Altalena,
had spent years in British prisons and deportation camps as a
result of denunciations by the Jewish Agency. They suspected
the Government ; and the Government suspected that the arms
of the Irgun battalions, despite the latter's formal incorporation
into Haganah, might one day be turned against them.

In the end the Government agreed to the first of Irgun's
demands 20 per cent of the arms to Jerusalem but remained
adamant on the surrender of the remaining 80 per cent ; and
three days before the actual arrival of the ship the negotiations
broke down.

The Altalena arrived on the morning of Sunday June 20 at
the beach of Kfar Vitkin, 20 miles north of Tel Aviv, This beach,
with a small natural harbour, fairly well protected against detection

THE END OF TERRORISM 247

by United Nations Truce Observers, had been designated as the
place of unloading by the Israeli Government. To avoid detection,
the arms and men had of course to be unloaded at night and
immediately transported away by a fleet of trucks. When the
negotiations were broken off, the Government had warned Irgun
that it would not help with the unloading assuming that Irgun
alone would be unable to carry out the difficult job and be forced
to accept the Government's terms. Irgun, however, decided to
go ahead with the unloading alone.

When the Altalena arrived at Kfar Vitkin on Sunday at 5 A.M.
it was too late to start unloading her, so she was sent back to
cruise during the day on the high seas outside territorial waters.
It is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding this whole
extraordinary intrigue, that when Menachem Beigin, Commander-
in-Chief of Irgun, telephoned to the Government's liaison officer,
David C., and informed him that " the girl " (this was the code
name for the Altalena) had been sent back to the high seas, the
latter replied : " Well done ". Beigin then asked whether the
Government would reconsider its decision and help in the un-
loading after all ; and the War Office man replied that " Maybe
they would send a few trucks ". In fact, however, the Cabinet
had by that time made up its mind to force a showdown with
Irgun, and the latter, with considerable naivety, walked into
the trap.

The Altalena returned to Kfar Vitkin on Sunday evening after
dark, and during the night the 900 volunteers and some of the
arms were disembarked. The whole population of the village of
Kfar Vitkin, which is a Labour Party stronghold, and some units
of the Israeli Army, helped in the unloading. The first mate
of the ship,. Jack B., veteran of the Eighth Army, described to
me the next day how " the people in Kfar Vitkin were throwing
flowers at us. Schoolboys were wading through the water carrying
cases of ammunition over their heads to keep it dry and crying
with joy. We felt that the country needed our anti-tank guns and
Spandaus as the desert needs water."

However, with the rise of day the men on the beach discovered
that they were surrounded by Government troops including
armoured cars, artillery, and everything the Israeli Army could
muster. At the same time the Government's two corvettes were
closing in on the Altalena from the sea. These troop movements,
and particularly the movement of the corvettes (usually stationed

248 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

in Tel Aviv harbour), could not fail to attract the attention of the
United Nations Observers, and in the morning a United Nations
plane circled over Kfar Vitkin : the landing was discovered.
There was no longer any point in sending the Altalena back to sea.

The events of the rest of the day are a story of confusion and
almost hysterical behaviour, both on the Government's and
Irgun's side. Some time during the morning the Commander
of the Government troops sent a ten-minute ultimatum to Beigin
demanding " unconditional surrender ", but Beigin had mean-
while boarded the Altalena and the walkie-talkie communication
between the boat and the shore had broken down. The mayor
of the neighbouring town of Nathanya, Ben Ami, was called in to
mediate ; but his car broke down on the way. When at last he
arrived in Kfar Vitkin he found, in his own words, representatives
of both parties " discussing the pros and cons of Irgun philosophy
versus Mapai I philosophy ". In between, sporadic bursts of auto-
matic fire were exchanged on the beach, and the first killed and
woujmded lay on the sands. Then the delegates turned to dis-
cussing the ten-minute ultimatum, whose time-limit had already
expired by several hours ; and Irgun's Second-in- Command,
Meridor, said to the Commander of the Government troops, Dan
Epstein, " You can't address us in this language, not even the
British dared to do that ; who are you after all, and where were
you when our boys were hanged ? "

Ben Ami, who is a jovial, chubby, Palestine-born town mayor,
tried to talk some sense into them, and asked to be taken to see
Beigin ; but on the way across the armed camps on the beach
he " ran into some old friends among the Irgun people, with
whom I had been interned in Latrun, so we engaged in reminis-
cences and some more time was lost ". All of which goes to
show that even at this point nobody believed that the Government
troops would really open fire.

About noon Ben Ami returned to Nathanya, where he had a
meeting with two leading Government representatives, to whom
he submitted Irgun's agreement to all arms being deposited in
Government armouries " under joint supervision ". Irgun had
also agreed that the Government should have the final say about
their distribution. (Obviously, once U.N.O. had spotted the
arms, they would have to remain in sealed armouries for the
duration of the truce ; but the U.N.O. aspect, as will be seen,

1 Mapai : Hebrew Labour Party.

THE END OF TERRORISM 249

was the least of the worries of all parties concerned.) The
Government representatives, however, declared that they refused
any further negotiation with Irgun, and some time in the afternoon
they opened fire without further warning on Irgun's men encircled
on the beach. These men surrendered the next morning and
were allowed to leave, having each been made to sign a somewhat
ridiculous undertaking that, if convoked by the authorities, they
would present themselves at the place indicated.

Meanwhile the ship itself had sailed in the afternoon from
Kfar Vitkin to Tel Aviv with only the crew, some Irgun leaders
and a few soldiers still on board. The idea was that, if they
beached themselves in Tel Aviv, the whole population of the
capital would run to the seashore to unload the arms some
four-fifths of which were still inside her hull. Incidentally the
Governments corvettes also ordered her to proceed to Tel Aviv,
as the Government hoped to be able to seize her in the harbour.

The ship arrived in Tel Aviv during the night ; the captain
beached her in the shallows about a hundred yards from the shore,
and, by a further coincidence, just in front of the Kaete Dan
Hotel, headquarters of the United Nations Truce Mission in
Israel. During the whole following day, until about four o'clock
in the afternoon, the Altalena served as a sitting target for the
machine-gun fire, and later the artillery, of the Government
troops on the shore with the whole ILN.O. staff and all the
foreign correspondents watching the show from the terraces of
the hotels and cafes. At 4 P.M. she was finally set on fire by several
direct mortar hits and burned out, with the arms and ammunition
still in her hold. The Prime Minister and Minister of War, Ben
Gurion, in reporting the events to the State Council, exclaimed :
" Blessed be the gun which set the ship on fire that gun will
have its place in Israel's War Museum ".

About forty people had been killed in the fighting on the
beaches, on board ship, or while, trying to swim ashore.

It is difficult to decide which party had behaved more foolishly
during this whole affair : the Government or Irgun. While the
ship was still burning in Tel Aviv harbour, I talked in Nathanya,
in Ben Ami's house, with some of the volunteers who had arrived
on her. One was an attractive dark girl, a student of mathematics
and physics at the Sorbonne. She said : " I gave up my studies
to defend the Jewish State. I know nothing about political dis-
sensions, and still don't know the difference between Mapai and

250 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Irgun. As we approached the shores we were received by the
fire of Jewish guns, and four of us were killed. This ends all hope. ' '

The feelings of the majority of the population were of a similar
kind. While Jewish artillery fired shells into the helpless ship,
the mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokakh, heading a delegation of
the mayors of Petakh Tikwa, Nathanya and Ramat Gan, pleaded
with Ben Gurion to order a cease-fire so as to give Rokakh an
opportunity to board the ship and persuade the Commander to
hoist the white flag. Rokakh almost went down on his knees,
pleading for an act of mercy : " After all they are our children ;
they bled yesterday in Jaffa and Jerusalem, and they will bleed
to-morrow again that we may live ". Ben Gurion refused, under
the pretext that he had no power " to interrupt military operations
without a Cabinet decision ".

Meanwhile on the beach mass hysteria had reached its peak.
Young Irgun boys were running towards Haganah armoured cars
tearing their shirts open and yelling " Shoot at me, but let our
brothers on the ship live ". One wounded boy with half his head
blown off kept running round in circles on the sand like a decapi-
tated chicken. Irgun men ran up to the U.N.O. observers, who
were watching the show from the Kaete Dan terrace, as if sitting
in the dress circle, and yelled at them, " Come and help us, you
bastards, can't you see that people are being murdered here ? "
When the ship was already ablaze and the captain was waving a
white sheet from the bridge, artillery continued to pump shells
into her, while machine-guns fired at people swimming in the
sea from a hundred yards' distance. One of the members of the
American Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, Samuel
Merlin, who had travelled with us from Paris, was on board. He
was wounded in one arm ; when he jumped into the water from
the burning ship and clung to a rubber dinghy (he can't swim)
they went on machine-gunning him and hit him in the leg.
Abraham Stavsky, the man who had been accused and acquitted
of the murder of Arlosoroff (cf. p. 305) and had successfully
run the British blockade thirteen times, was wounded on board
and killed by machine-gun bullets while swimming towards the
shore. Beigin was the last man to abandon ship.

The ship continued to burn for twenty-four hours, a hundred
yards from the shore with, in her hold, the luggage of the 900
volunteers, and thousands of rifles, bren guns, Spandaus, anti-
tank and anti-aircraft weapons. At that time Tel Aviv still had

THE END OF TERRORISM 251

not a single ack-ack battery. The captain's request to be per-
mitted to board the ship and extinguish the fire with the help of
the Army, was refused by the Government. Nor did the Tel
Aviv fire-brigade turn up.

The night after the tragedy, Foreign Minister Shertok and
Beigin each held a Press conference. Beigin *s was timed to start
after Shertok had finished, but Shertok dragged his conference
out to prevent correspondents going to the rival show. The
same night the Government arrested some two hundred and fifty
people in Tel Aviv, in addition to round one hundred soldiers
who had refused to obey the order to fire. The leaders of Irgun
went into hiding, and for a few hours it looked as if civil war were
at hand. That it was avoided was as much due to the good sense
of the Haganah commanders and rank and file, who treated their
Irgun prisoners as comrades, refusing to pay much heed to Ben
Gurion's rantings, as to Menachem Beigin who, still dripping
from the swim, ran to Irgun's broadcasting station and made a
remarkable one-hour speech, full of bitterness, but culminating
in the order not to shoot or return the fire of Government troops.

After a week or so of internal tension, tempers gradually
calmed down. The renewal of the war, a fortnight later, did
the rest. During the second truce, the dissolution of Irgun and
the induction of its members into the Army was completed. It
was a happy ending, quite out of keeping with Jewish history :
the victory of the new type of Israelis grown on Palestine soil
over the obstinate fanaticism of ghetto-bred politicians.

To-day Irgun is a matter of the past ; certain considerations
which previously imposed silence are no longer valid, and the
way is open for a more correct assessment of its part in Palestine
history. In the summer of 19^, when the world gasped with
horror about the blowing up of the King David Hotel, Jewish
Agency spokesmen treated Irgun as Fascist thugs, though in fact
Irgun had acted in agreement with the Agency's own Haganah.
Yet such is the dilemma of truth and propaganda that, at a moment
when the whole future of Jewish Palestine was touch and go, its
friends had no other choice but to keep silent. A half-truth is a
half-lie ; on the other hand, as Pascal says somewhere, " Truth
without charity is an idol which we must neither love nor worship".

In the midst of the mass hysteria which surrounded the
AUalena incident, the same predicament arose. A number of

252 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

people knew of the Government's connivance in the breach of
the truce which the smuggling-in of arms and men represented,
and that the Government's representatives had themselves selected
Kfar Vitkin as the landing-place. But to denounce Israel's
Government for the breach of a farcical truce, which left without
any control the numerous Arab ports and vast desert areas, while
the tiny area of Israel was teeming with United Nations observers,
would have meant sacrificing to the idol of truth without charity.
So once more Irgun had to act as the whipping-boy, as the
irresponsible truce-breaker, discrediting the goody-goody, law-
abiding Government. That the latter wanted to have it both ways
is only human in the circumstances ; but the gesture of Pilate
has never commanded much sympathy.

It may be added that in his statement on the Altalena, Foreign
Secretary Shertok repeatedly emphasized that the Government's
action was primarily motivated by Irgun 's " defiance of State
authority ", while the attempted breach of the truce was in the
Government's eyes merely " a secondary consideration at best ".
It was a curious statement coming from a Foreign Minister ; a
more revealing admission of the purely internal nature of the
conflict, with ILN.O. as a welcome pretext, could hardly be
imagined.

One closing remark about the ethical aspects of Irgun terrorism.
I have always held that the dilemma of Ends and Means is the
core of the human predicament. As the problem admits of no
final solution, each period has to attempt a temporary solution
adapted to its own conditions :

" That attempt has to proceed in two steps. The first is to
realize with open eyes that a certain admixture of ruthlessness
is inseparable from human pi<ress. Without the rebellion of
the Barons, there would be no Magna Carta ; without the
storming of the Bastille, no proclamation of the Rights of Man.
So the more one cherishes ethical values, the more one should
beware of crankishness. The trouble with some well-meaning
ethical movements is that they have so many sectarians and
cranks in their midst. . . .

" But the second and more important step is to realize that
the End only justifies the Means within very narrow limits.
A surgeon is justified in inflicting pain because the results of
the operation are reasonably predictable; but drastic large-
scale operations on the social body involve many unknown

THE END OF TERRORISM 253

factors, may lead to unpredictable results, and one does not
know at what point the surgeon's lancet turns into the butcher's
hatchet. Or, to change the metaphor, ruthlessness is like
arsenic ; injected in very small doses it is a stimulant to the
social body, in large quantities it is deadly poison. And to-day
we are all suffering from moral arsenic poisoning." l

Judged by these standards, I believe that by and large Irgun
ZVai Leumi's fight for Israel's survival was morally justified.
When the obvious fallacies, like the labelling of a national resist-
ance movement as " Fascist " or " Revolutionary " according to
taste, are discarded, Irgun appears as an instance of the historically
inevitable, violent reaction which oppressive action never fails
to beget. Irgun was neither better nor worse than the Irish,
Macedonian, Polish, Indian or French resistance movements ;
with the exception of two incidents the hanging of the sergeants
and Deir Yassin their self-imposed system of warnings, and
their rejection of indiscriminate murder, make them appear in a
rather more favourable light than most of their predecessors in
history. They never accepted the tenet that the End justifies all
Means, which is the creed of totalitarian movements, and which
was adopted by their rivals of the Stern Group. Between the
hypocrisies of Haganah for which they often acted as scapegoats,
and the savagery of the Sternists, they succeeded to the very end
in maintaining a precarious balance sustained by a complex system
of moral reasoning, good discipline and a spirit of quixotic chivalry.
They were a small group of men, persecuted both by the Manda-
tory and their own kin ; to revert to the previous metaphor, their
ruthlessness was the arsenic injected into Jewry's social body
which made it fight not the deadly poison which convulses the
totalitarian State. This difference, though only a matter of
gradations, was demonstrated by Irgun *s voluntary self-liquidation
after the proclamation of the State and its self-transformation
into a bona fide democratic party, as opposed to the Stern
Group's persistence in terrorism.

It was a remarkable transformation, the more so as the Govern-
ment, and majority parties did nothing to make it easier for
Irgun to submit to their rivals and persecutors of yesterday. The
leaders of the Provisional Government were wont to answer all
criticism with apologetic references to the youth and inexperience

1 From a talk delivered in a B.B.C. broadcast series, " The Challenge of
Our Time ", in May 1947.

254 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the administration, and its sudden emergence from semi-
illegality ; it would have been only logical to extend this plea for
indulgence to their opponents who had lived for years not in the
Agency's twilight, but in the shadow of the gallows. It would
have been easy for the Prime Minister or one of his colleagues to
make a generous gesture if only in a speech on the lines that
both parties had made mistakes in the past, and that the Govern-
ment, though disapproving of Irgun's methods, appreciated their
courage and honoured their dead. Never has a gesture of this
kind, not even in the midst of battle, been made by any of the
leaders of Israel.

The reason for all this is again the long historic gap in Israel's
political education. Her leaders are politicians, not statesmen ;
how could it be otherwise since they never carried the responsi-
bilities of statehood ? For a Churchill, rooted in the nineteenth
century, it was a natural gesture to call the Opposition into the
Government in the nation's emergency ; even de Gaulle, though
rooted in the seventeenth, included all parties in his first Govern-
ment. They were statesmen who could draw on precedents and
echoes from the past. Israel's new-baked Government had no
precedents and no past ; like a young school teacher facing an
unruly class, it was beset with inferiority complexes and obsessed
with the urge to assert its authority by draconic means. The
Altalena was a critical climax, and probably the gravest test for
the young State. That the crisis was overcome, and the country
found its way towards the beginnings of a democratic routine, is
the ultimate proof of Israel's growing political maturity.

V
PROPHETS AND PHARISEES

TEL AVIV TRIVIA

Monday, June 7

Second day in Tel Aviv. Air raids and truce rumours.
Visitors all day : the usual melancholy procession of girl-friends
and cronies of twenty years ago. Wanted a time-bridge to re-
establish broken contacts. We have a room on the sea with a
balcony ; when we close the french windows we suffocate in the
khamssin, when we open them we are deafened by the roar of
the surf and the cafe orchestra underneath playing alternately
" Carmen " and the new patriotic hit, " The Negev ", amplified
by loud-speakers straight into the room. Then the telephone, the
air-raid sirens, more visitors, and the first sweat stains appearing
on the sticky shirt. The endearing madhouse atmosphere of Tel
Aviv has got us already.

At the moment it is a mixture of delirious enthusiasm for the
infant state (which is just over three weeks old), of bitterness and
suspicion. Everybody is sceptical about the prospects of a truce,
and its outcome if there is to be one. People here have thirty
years' experience of more than a score of enquiry commissions,
round table conferences, mediations and broken promises.

Wednesday

At four Alexis Ladas, of the U.N.O, mission, rang up to say
that both Jews and Arabs have accepted the truce. At six Shertok
gave a press conference at the Scopus. I cabled :

" Moshe Shertok, Foreign Minister of Israel, announced
the Jews* unconditional acceptance before a tense audience of
correspondents, to the accompaniment of the wailing of an air
raid siren. Shertok spoke with affable informality and answered
questions for a whole hour. His easy-going manner expressed
more than the actual wording of his statement that Israel
accepted the truce for diplomatic and not for military reasons.'*

255

256 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Friday

First day of the truce.

This morning we watched from the roof of the Gat-Rimmon
Bernadotte's shining white aeroplane circle over Tel Aviv like a
motorized dove of peace ; only the olive branch was missing.

On the way to the Scopus we ran into Alexis, who told us that
the Stern Group had made a statement to an American journalist,
to the effect that they were going to bump off U.N.O.'s military
Truce Observers. So I rang up Amikam, editor of the Sternist
paper Mimak y whom I had known well in 1945 when he had
just finished a four years' prison sentence for participating in
a bank robbery on behalf of the Group. He promised to meet
us in the evening at Kaete Dan's, where he arrived shortly after
10 P.M.

He is an extremely correct, blond young man with exquisite
manners ; a little shy, with a warm, open smile. In other words,
the typical terrorist according to the Hitchcock convention that a
terrorist should look exactly the opposite of what one expects a
terrorist to look like. I can't help liking him until the fanatic
kernel pierces through the gentle flesh. The point in making the
date with him was to make him meet Alexis privately and thereby
to convince him that the U.N. people are quite human.

Alexis Ladas was just the right person for that he is a young
Greek of the dark, Mediterranean type, frequently mistaken
for a Jew, with a spontaneous and informal manner. Besides,
like Amikam and myself, he has " done time " : as a member of
the Greek resistance movement he was captured by the Italians
and spent two years in jail under sentence of death and devoured
by lice. He turned up shortly after Amikam, and the three of us
adjourned to another table in a dark corner of the terrace, where,
to break the ice, we began to compare prison experiences and
their psychological effect on one. It is amazing how common
certain patterns of experience are, regardless of the difference of
country and conditions. The convict-orderlies, gaolers, chief
wardens and librarians seem to belong to an international race ;
it was almost like talking about the Old School. After a while I
left them alone at their table, and when, a quarter of an hour later,
M. and I joined them again, they were engaged in a heated debate
about the correct pronunciation of ancient Greek words, Amikam
maintaining that the Greek he had learnt in college in Poland was

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 257

the real thing, and Alexis' a corruption. Then we returned to
prisons, and the feel of being under sentence of death. We had
particularly disliked the idea of being fetched at night, and that
the next morning the routine in the prison would go on as if one
had never existed. In between Alexis managed to say, quite off-
hand, " By the way, I hope you aren't going to bump me off "
and Amikam just chuckled in a friendly, polite way. However
that may be, this morning the Stern Group issued a communi-
que disowning yesterday's interview (" irresponsible misrepre-
sentation ", etc. etc.), and denying any threat.

Before all this happened, Shertok came for dinner. He told us
a long story about last-minute negotiations with King Abdullah,
who was anxious to come to terms with the Jews provided a way
could be found to save his face vis-d-vis the other Arab princes.
Just before the war Goldie Meyerson (now Israeli ambassadress
to Moscow) went to Amman disguised as an Arab woman, but
found a changed Abdullah aged, tired, resigned. He made
some discreet hints to the effect that the power of decision did not
rest entirely with him referring of course to Glubb and said
with resignation that events must take their course.

Each time I started on the subject of Israel's attitude to Russia,
Shertok side-tracked the conversation. I think that neither he
nor Ben Gurion realizes the amount of apprehension, even among
well-meaning people abroad, that Israel might topple over to the
other side. They are so sure of themselves that they think they
musft be above suspicion, and that every impartial observer must
see at once through the slanderous attempts to brand them as
bolshies. Above all, they can't afford to antagonize the Russians
by any explicit, pro-Western statement, as without Czech arms
Israel would be sunk. But the real trouble is, they think that
everybody knows their feelings and appreciates their predicament.
With all their shrewdness the Jewish politicians suffer from the
naive belief that everybody sees them as they see themselves.

Saturday

Drinks with Alexis, who was very depressed : the first batch
of the U.N.O. military Truce Observers has arrived, among them
some young and inexperienced American officers. One of these
almost wrecked the precarious truce negotiations in Galilee by
assembling six Jewish and six Arab officers on a bridge, and
asking them in pidgin English : " Who shoot after truce ? who

S

258 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

break truce ? who shoot, say eh ? " Naturally both parties
started yelling and accusing each other, and had they not both
been covered by machine-guns from the other side, they would
have started shooting again there and then.

Sunday

Saw two more old friends, Dr. Hahn and Dr. Eppler. Both
have typically Palestinian careers : Hahn is an M.D. who gradu-
ated at Vienna University and couldn't obtain a licence to practise
under the British ; so, being an amateur painter, he opened a
workshop for handpainted dolls. Eppler is an Austrian banker
who couldn't find a job either ; so, being an amateur conjuror,
he made his living as " Dr. Mabuse the King of Magicians " in a
borrowed dinner-jacket in a Haifa music-hall. Now Hahn is back
at medicine, and Eppler a high civil servant. Another member
of our gang at Vienna University was less lucky. A parliamentary
stenographer until the Anschluss, he now has to make his living
as a night-watchman, with ulcers.

Monday

The first Egyptian pilot who was forced down in Israeli terri-
tory crash-landed somewhere near Rechovot. A buxom Haganah
girl from the village happened to be first on the spot and kept watch
over him with a sten-gun. To be the prisoner of a woman, and
in particular of a Jewish girl, is about the most deadly humiliation
for a Moslem. After a while the young pilot started to cry, and
exclaimed, throwing his arms into the air : " Allah ! my father
told me never to leave Cairo ".

Tuesday

Abram Weinshall and Peter Bergson l for lunch.

Abram has started a campaign for introducing the English
electoral system to replace the present proportional representation,
which is mainly responsible for the ridiculously high number of
splinter parties. At the last election to the representative body
of the Jews of Palestine, held in 1944, there were round 250,000
votes cast and not less than twenty-five parties competing for
them including a list of " The Young Men from Aden ", the

1 Founder and Chairman of the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation
in the United States.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 259

" Orthodox Female Workers " and the " Maccabi Sports Club ".
The system of voting for party lists instead of individual candi-
dates furthermore leads to the development of powerful Party
Machines and Party Bureaucracies which play a decisive part in
making or breaking the political and professional career of the
Israeli citizen. The famous " party key system " provides for a
proportional distribution not only of the number of parliamentary
seats, but also of the administrative jobs and the share in the
budget allocated to each party. In fact, each political party in
Israel is a kind of limited company, coterie, life insurance and
masonic lodge, all in one. A Revisionist doctor makes his living
on Revisionist patients, goes to Revisionist cafes and frequents
only Revisionist circles. You can live for years in Tel Aviv
knowing hardly anybody outside your own political clique ; and
to be seen frequently with people of different allegiance soon
brings one into an odour of suspicion. One of the most urgent
needs of Israel is a bar like the one in the House of Commons,
where members of different parties can meet over a drink in
between debates and find out that the other chap is human too.
But then, Israelis don't drink ; and if the future Parliament has
a restaurant, each party will be given a separate table with the
number of chairs carefully calculated according to the party key.
It is all a consequence of the gap in the past : for the next genera-
tion or so, Israel will be feverishly busy making up for two thousand
lost years of political life.

The war is producing the beginnings of an Israeli folklore.
The soldiers from the Negev have taken to growing beards and
drooping moustaches ; those from Galilee grow Guardee mous-
taches turning up at the ends. There is a new Hebrew army
slang developing. The soldiers all wear different types of head-
gear : Palmach mostly a kind of little boy's sun-hat, with the
brim turned down all round and pulled over the face, which gives
them a rather dumb yokel look ; others wear knitted caps with
pom-poms on top ; others a sort of baseball player's cap with a
long peak ; others motley Army caps which British Quartermaster
Sergeants sold wholesale to Haganah before leaving. Very few
have rifles Israel's standard small-arm is the sten-gun. None
have kitbags ; when a unit moves, the soldiers* luggage, consisting
mainly of cardboard suitcases, is dumped on a lorry.

The days of British rule just one month back have already
become almost legendary, and another kind of folklore is beginning

2 6o PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

to grow : stories and legends about the War of Independence.
Example : Jasha's story about a patient of his, a woman of sixty-
five, who escorted her grandson, an Irgunist wanted by the
police, across Tel Aviv to a safe hiding place walking three
steps behind the unarmed boy with a revolver in her handbag.
A number of these bourgeois Jewish mothers and grandmothers
have done quite astonishing things like the women in the
French Resistance.

Friday

In the evening we went, to the Hebrew Chamber Theatre's
new play on kibbutz life, which is outstanding. It tells the story
of the events which led to the death of Uri, a boy born and reared
in the kibbutz. It starts with Uri's arrival back in the kibbutz
from an agricultural school. He learns that his parents have
divorced in other words his mother has moved from the room
which she had shared with his father, Willi, to the room of another
man called Abraham. Uri resents this but soon calms down ;
there is no room for Hamlets in a communal settlement. He meets
Mica, a young refugee girl who came to Palestine a short while
ago from Poland via a Russian forced labour camp, and they
become lovers. All is well until Ginger, Uri's friend from the
agricultural school, turns up. Ginger is a commander in Palmach.
Palmach is busy smuggling illegal immigrants into the country
and fighting guerilla actions against British troops intent on
rounding up the immigrants. Ginger asks Uri to join Palmach ;
Uri agrees at once, but would like a few days' delay because on
this very day his affair with Mica is going to be legalised : they
are to move from their respective tents into one double room
which, according to the customs of the settlement, means that
they are considered as married. But Ginger insists that Uri join
the same night ; almost without hesitation Uri agrees. He breaks
the news to Mica ; she implores Uri to spend just one night
in the room designed for their future married life. " But why ? "
asks Uri. " What's the difference ? One night more or less."
And Mica explains the difference. Once they have taken posses-
sion of the room, she can't be chased out of it. It will be legally
her room (for only married couples are entitled to a room ; the
young bachelors sleep in tents). And a room is a home ; and a
home is the one thing she has wanted, more bitterly and stubbornly
than anything else in her wretched ten years of refugee life she

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 261

is nineteen. Of course she is fond of Uri ; but the centre of the
issue, her craving and obsession, is the room.

Uri is twenty ; he was born and brought up in this com-
munistic settlement ; he is quite incapable of understanding why
a girl should want a room. He slaps her on the back and pushes
off.

The next time he sees her, on his way to a new assignment,
he is just as affable, non-committal and Tarzan-like as before.
He doesn't even give.Mica a chance to tell him that she is pregnant.
He pushes off again.

A Palmach camp in the mountains. A bunch of illegal immi-
grants have landed at night somewhere on the beach. British
troops are trying to intercept them. To prevent this from happen-
ing a bridge has to be blown up. Uri, commander of the Palmach
unit, accepts without hesitation Simeon's offer to undertake this
dangerous job. Simeon is a middle-aged man with several
children whose wife is in hospital on the danger list. All this
does not move Uri. But when a friend tells him that instead of
sending Simeon, Uri should have undertaken to do the job him-
self, he decides unhesitatingly that this is right. He pushes off
to blow up the bridge as phlegmatically as he pushed off to leave
Mica in the lurch, and is promptly killed. End of a young Tarzan
callous, gay, unsentimental, matter-of-fact, brave. He is not
an attractive hero ; but he is the truest symbol of the native
generation which Hebrew literature has as yet produced.

Mica is the counterpoint. She is not a native of the country
like Uri ; she is a refugee, over-sensitive, tragic, sentimental, with
a past full to the brim with Things to Forget among these a
sordid abortion which she underwent in a refugee camp in Teheran.
She believes herself unworthy to bear the child of Uri the hero,
and decides to commit suicide. But the secretary of the kibbutz^
the ubiquitous Biebermann, explains to her that all her problems
are so much hot air, and that all that matters is that she should
produce the child, one more citizen of Israel finis, curtain.

There is a narrator who sums up the deliberately crude moral
of a very subtle play in the simplest possible language. The stage
decorations are reduced to a Shakespearean minimum ; the
scenery is changed by stage-hands while the action goes on. The
actors were, until a short time ago, amateurs ; and some still
are.

262 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Thursday

Drinks with Robert Capa, the photographer. He says that
nowhere on his travels, from China to Moscow and from India
to the U.S.A., has he found such bad public relations as here :
" At least the Jews aren't guilty of mere mediocrity ".

Incredible as it sounds, Israel's Government of thirteen
Ministers includes neither a Ministry of Information nor a
Ministry of Education, although there are separate Ministries of
" Religion and War-Victims ", " Social Welfare ", " Police and
Minorities ", " Communications ", " Immigration and Health "
and so on. The omission of two of the most important ministries
is again a consequence of the fatal party key system. Having
forgotten in the first instance to envisage a Minister of Informa-
tion, the Government could not now co-opt one as this would up-
set the precarious party balance. As for Education, the socialists,
the orthodox, and the neither socialist nor orthodox, each run
their own schools ; and for the time being it is quite unthinkable
that they should accept the authority of one Minister. The curse of
the two thousand missed years. ... A primitive people will start
a primitive community and gradually develop its institutions ; but
for a community with ripe and over-ripe political philosophies to
learn the ABC of nationhood is a different and unique task.

Lunch with Moshe A. from Field Security a good-looking,
young, blond, alert sabra. He said that although he was an anti-
Communist, the effect of reading Darkness at Noon was to make
him less so. We had a long discussion on the stereotyped pattern.
The psychological clue to A. and his like is that after what Britain
has done and is doing to them, they can't help feeling that any-
thing is better than Anglo-Saxon perfidy, and thus a process of
wishful thinking sets in concerning Russia which gives an uncon-
scious twist to all facts and arguments. The nearer one is to
Scylla the more harmless appears Charybdis.

But there is another aspect to this dreary tragedy. These
people are not attracted by Russia, but pushed towards her. At
the bottom of their hearts they know quite well what the M.V.D.
has in store for them. To fall for the temptation of sirens and
mermaids is in the nature of man ; but the urge to sleep with
a crocodile out of sheer despair is a privilege of our time. Mr.
Bevin as a pin-up girl of Western democracy makes even the
crocodile seem to have some sex-appeal.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 263

Saturday

The heat is getting really bad ; the row of sea-front cafes
under our windows blare tinned music through their loud-
speakers all day, and in the evenings one is forced to sit around
on cafe terraces until after midnight because, owing to the black-
out, one can only remain indoors with shutters closed and curtains
drawn, which means suffocation. The maintenance of the black-
out in the second week of the truce is quite silly. The Egyptians
have never made a night raid on Tel Aviv even during the war ;
to start now during the truce, with Bernadotte's staff sitting in the
Kaete Dan, would be suicide on their part. The strange thing is
that most Tel Avivians agree that the black-out is logically un-
warranted, yet do not seem to mind. " It's better to be careful,"
they all say, " one never knows." Then they go on by explaining
that we have no idea of air raids because during the blitz, as
everybody knows, all Londoners stayed day and night in deep
shelters.

This low morale of the majority of civilians in Tel Aviv con-
trasts strikingly with the self-sacrifice of the people in the settle-
ments and in the Army. It is much more pronounced than the
usual contrast between front line and hinterland in other wars,
for here it reflects the gulf between refugees and pioneers, between
the older and younger generations. The majority of the people
in Tel Aviv today are middle-aged refugees, whose tragic experi-
ences have not always made them more pleasant or public-spirited.
Israel will only begin to take shape after the disappearance of this
lost generation which, like the green slime floating on a pond,
blocks the fresh springs of the nation's vitality.

Unfortunately, most foreigners here only come into touch
with the negative aspects of this land of contrasts, and form an
accordingly one-sided picture. The Truce Observers who have
alternative dealings with Jews and Arabs undergo gradually the
same process as the British administrators did before them.

Sunday

Dinner with Nicole de R., French newsreel man Decae and
a British deserter who has joined the Israeli Army. He is the
mercenary-adventurer type who gave so much trouble in Spain.
When he got drunk he confided that he was through with the
whole thing and so were two of his buddies, only waiting to get

264 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

together enough money and push off somehow to Cairo, serve
their term, and have done with it.

. . . The eternal overlapping of the tragic and the comic. The
bank-robber and Alexis arguing about Greek pronunciation was
pure comedy ; a turn on the switchboard of fate and Alexis might
lie somewhere on the pavement of Tel Aviv with a bullet in his
stomach, and Amikam run amok with a gun across the streets.

Monday

Visit to Ein Hashofet, a collective settlement which had served
as the main model of the fictitious commune in my Palestine novel.
We had an icy reception; in the communal Dining Hall all
the familiar characters avoided our table. I had thought that in
the novel they were rather idealized ; now I began to feel like the
murderer revisiting the scene of his crime.

It was a rather painful return. But it's all very well for the out-
sider to arrogate to himself the part of the judicious observer ; if
one lives the hard and single-minded life of a collective settle-
ment one is bound to become hypersensitive and intolerant
of criticism. And that goes for the whole Israeli community.
In the struggle for survival objectivity becomes a luxury, and
detachment a crime. This antithesis between action and con-
templation is one of the insoluble dilemmas. Projected into the
writer's sphere it becomes the dilemma between truth and
propaganda. . . . Title for a worst-seller :

" THE ANTINOMIES OF TRUTH AND PROPAGANDA

or

THE ART OF SITTING BETWEEN Two STOOLS IN TWELVE
PAINFUL LESSONS"

Back to Haifa in the colourful dusk. At dinner in the Lev
Hacarmel Hotel Mr. W M the proprietor, joined us. He has just
lost his elder son, killed ten minutes before the truce began in
Jerusalem. His younger son, a pharmacist, told us several stories
about British intrigues which sounded somewhat unconvincing.
But then, if you know that X. is the devil, the harder you try to
prove it the more unconvincing you will sound ; in the end, to
prove the truth you will resort to the lie.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 265

Thursday

The Egyptians have seen the light : hoping that civil war in
Israel is imminent, they have refused to let a Jewish supply
convoy pass to Negba and have also attacked Colonel Bonde's
white U.N.O. plane. Bonde thereupon notified the Israeli
Government that Egypt has broken the truce and that Israel is
free to act against the Egyptians. But that of course does not
mean the lifting of the arms embargo. If, the Egyptians having
officially been branded as truce-breakers, the Jews now imported
arms, they would in turn be breaking the truce vts-d-vis Syria,
Transjordan, Iraq and the Lebanon. Even if Syria, for instance,
were convicted of importing arms, the Jews could not do the
same without being found guilty of breaking the truce towards
the other Arab states. Operation Deluge of diplomatic logic.

In fact, of course, the truce is broken by both parties continu-
ally ; and the U.N.O. people know it as well as everybody else.
The whole thing is even more farcical than the Spanish non-
intervention comedy was.

Friday, June 25 (after the Altalena incident)

Yesterday a Palmach unit broke up Irgun's headquarters,
smashed the furniture and tore up the files. On Beigin's orders
not to shoot at any price, the Irgun boys stood by white-faced
and silent, watching the destruction. Outside, the street was lined
with Palmach armoured cars ; although the whole Irgun is con-
vinced that Palmach is out for Beigin's head, Beigin insisted on
walking past the cars with deliberate slowness. When they got
past, a random shot was fired behind them, and B. had to be
restrained by Captain Halpern, who was with him, from walking
back and starting an argument. Halpern explained to him, not
illogically, that if he wanted to commit suicide he should hire the
opera hall and invite the world press ; otherwise it would hardly
be worth while.

The number of arrested people is two hundred and fifty in
Tel Aviv alone, with at least the same number in the rest of the
country. Among them Peter Bergson and Meridor (cf. p. 77).
Merlin, who was shot in the leg while hanging onto a rubber
dinghy, is in hiding. I had a message asking me to visit him he
was lying in bed in a schoolteacher's flat somewhere in under-
ground Israel, reading Eliot's Four Quartets. I took down his

2 66 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

story and checked it against the other testimonies collected before.

Then an Irgun courier girl took me to another flat, where I
saw Menachem Beigin for the first time in my life. I had actually
talked to him before, but without seeing him in a dark room
in Tel Aviv in 1945, when he was the man most wanted by the
British Police, with 500 on his head. On that occasion we had
argued for about an hour in the pitch darkness which Irgun's
conspiratorial precautions prescribed. I had tried to convince
him that England was one thing, the Palestine Administration
another ; that with the end of the war the White Paper would
be abolished, and that Israel's future was that of a Dominion in
the. British Commonwealth. Beigin had said in substance that
he didn't believe British policy would change, even if Labour
came into power ; but that even if I were right, his job was to
fight the Palestine Government, and that he couldn't get his
boys to risk the gallows by telling them that it was all a temporary
misunderstanding and the English ultimately very nice people.

Judging by his voice coming across the table in the dark, I
had imagined the owner of the voice as a tall, ascetic-looking man
with a fanatic expression. Actually he is rather short, thin, frail,
very short-sighted, with a gentle, earnest young schoolmaster's
face. Obviously voices, like cigarettes and food, change their
flavour in the dark. His manner is that kind of self-assured
awkwardness which comes to people who, by achievement, have
learned to find a modus vivendi with their own shyness. He talks
as thoughtfully and unfanatically as his propaganda is bombastic
and violent ; he wears the loose, ill-fitting clothes of a scholar,
and has the scholar's dry charm. We got on much better than
at the time when he had been the Invisible Man, and I took down
his version of the Altalena and counter-checked it again. I have
got by now some forty pages of notes on it.

Monday

Last night had a long tete-a-tete with Jasha. He seemed rather
depressed it is the anti-climax which comes when one has at
last achieved something one wanted very badly in his case
the Jewish State. Before, one always lives in the naive illusion
that once the desired aim has been attained, all problems will
automatically solve themselves and the golden age begin. It is
the same process whatever the object of one's craving a mptor
car, a little house with a garden, a visa to America, or National

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 267

Independence. It is always the story of running after a girl and
wondering afterwards what all the excitement was about. Post
victoriam omnes cives tristes mnt. Jasha and all Israel seem to
be living through the hangover of the morning after the nuptials.
After we got home, a pathetic little chap representing the
non-Zionist, non-Stalinist true socialist party of Israel came to
see me with a suggestion that I should help to call an international
round-table conference of Jews and Arabs which is to solve the
problem on purely marxist lines. He said, personally he didn't
know any Arabs who would come to this conference, but I could
find some, in Cairo or Beirut. Secondly, he wanted me to start a
campaign in defence of Israel's two conscientious objectors, who
both belong to his party. He then came out, somewhat re-
luctantly, with the statement that his party was in favour of the
war of defence, but refused to fight under the present Government,
which did not represent true socialism. Only under a true
socialist government were they prepared to join the army. I
asked him what he thought would happen in the interval between
leaving the country undefended and the advent of the true socialist
government. He said " Yes, it is very difficult, but one has to
stick to one's principles ". He might as well have said " For-
tunately we can preach our gospel, as nobody takes us seriously ".
Another symbol of the irresponsibility of leftist sectarianism, of
the no-man's-land politicians of the British I.L.P., the American
Wallaceites, the French dialecticians around Sartre. Uncon-
sciously they all know that they can afford to save their purist
consciences, because when the Arabs or the Nazis or the Russians
invade them they will be defended by their less dialectical com-
patriots.

Sunday

The only oriental colour in this war comes from the monitored
reports of the Arab broadcasting stations. Samples : l

" While the Jews are busy smuggling arms, the ILN.O.
observers are sleeping with the beauties of Israel " (Beirut
Radio).

1 I made a collection of the juiciest bits of these monitored Arab broadcasts
which unfortunately went astray. The above samples are odd cuttings in my
files, without dates. Some of the most blustering death-to-the-Jews harangues
came from the Near East Arabic Radio in British Cyprus, which, according
to a statement by Mr. Bevin in the House of Commons, was run by " an
independent group of Arabs and Englishmen ".

268 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

" Jewish planes continuously fly over the Iraqi positions in
Jerusalem and drop poisoned food to the Moslem warriors "
(Damascus Radio).

" We Arabs should refuse to accept Jerusalem as a gift from
Bernadotte because we should then be under an obligation to
the Western nations we must win Jerusalem with blood and
by fire " (Ramallah Radio).

" The Zionists must be wiped off the face of the earth.
The Arabs must choose either the unity of Palestine or death "
(Near East Arabic Radio, Cyprus).

Friday

News item from Yediyoth Hadashot (New News), one of the
two daily papers which are published in Hebrew and German for
the benefit of recent immigrants :

" Four cakes of so-called Jew-soap, which were manufac-
tured from the corpses of Jews in German extermination camps,
were yesterday ritually buried in a corner of the cemetery of
Haifa reserved for martyrs. The four cakes of soap, which
had recently been found in Germany and brought to Israel,
were clad in shrouds and buried in the earth amid prayers."

News item from the Palestine Post a few days before :

" As British policemen were evacuated on board the Empress
of Australia, one party tore the Jewish flag down from the quay
and stamped on it."

Saturday

Drinks (lemon squash) with three former terrorist girls of
Irgun. One is a rather pretty Polish student type who fought
as an officer in the taking of Jaffa ; the second looks like an
Ukrainian peasant-girl, the third is a dark Yemenite. They were
rather overwhelming, and did not conceal their contempt for any
female who had no experience with gelignite and sten-gun. We
discussed literature; the agreed favourites were The Count of
Monte Cristo and Treasure Island. They reminded me somewhat
of the Socialist Woman Sniper Ludmilla Pavlichenko, who toured
England during the war on a Soviet goodwill mission, explaining
to bewildered English housewives how she had shot single-handed
217 German fascist beasts.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 269

Sunday

That Yemenite Irgun girl yesterday kept conspicuously silent
in the discussion about literature. Except those born and edu-
cated in Israel, most of the Yemenite Jews are illiterate. Even
among the second generation the majority are employed on low
menial work as housemaids, night-watchmen, shoeblacks, dust-
men. They don't intermarry with " white Jews " ; though no
legal or social restrictions exist, there is an unavowed colour-bar
operating. To a lesser extent this also applies to relations between
Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. If all goes well, Israel will have
within a generation a colour problem on top of all her other
problems.

Tuesday

Went to Rehovot to visit the Sieff Research Institute and the
new Weizmann Institute for Physics and Physical Biology. They
are doing all sorts of top secret scientific war work there, but
David Bergmann, warm and simple as always, showed us around
without any fuss about secrecy. He has been for many years
Weizmann's chief Research Assistant and private secretary ; and
had, though he never hinted at it, a greater share in Weizmann's
chemical discoveries than is publicly known.

The war research which they are doing is ingenious and
fascinating, but is still on the secret list. Among the more peace-
ful developments, Bergmann's pet idea is to plant castor trees
all over the Negev, as they grow anywhere and need no looking
after. The end products extracted by new methods from the
fruit of the tree include nylon which stands boiling without
deformation of the fibres, and can be used for anything from
women's stockings to mosquito nets. Also they have found a
method of detoxicating the protein in the beans. They have a
number of ingenious new contraptions for turning salt water into
fresh water, which are in use in a number of Negev settlements
and Army camps. Among their more distant future projects are
thermo-electric units for residential blocks, which make electricity
by exploiting the difference in temperature on the roof and in
the cellar.

Unfortunately as it isn't the season, couldn't show M. the
curious products of the grafting and hybridisation experiments
with citrus plants : grapefruit and oranges as big as footballs,

270 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

plpless giant tangerines and luscious avocado pears the magic
fruit of Canaan.

The Weizmann Institute for Physics has just been completed
and is the most modern of its kind anywhere, including America.
It will have three departments : physical chemistry, isotope re-
search for biological purposes ; and a department for applied
mathematics within the building an innovation. They are also
building an electronic brain.

The research stations in Rehovot are probably the only first-
rate thing in this country by international standards. Certainly
Israel's future lies in the direction of pioneer industries based on
original methods fermentation, technical crops, artificial plastics
and the like modern magic on an industrial scale. This day with
Bergmann was a very heart - warming experience. The good,
clean academic atmosphere acted like a disinfectant on our politics-
infested minds.

Meeting N. in the garden, it occurred to me that all nuclear
physicists seem to have the same mannerisms of a carefully culti-
vated awkwardness a graceful gaucherie, and an oblique
academic humour of a somewhat surrealistic tang.

Sunday

The truce ended on Friday, the Arabs having refused to agree
to its extension. After all their boisterous radio threats most
people here thought that this time things would get really tough,
and that Israel would be forced into a desperate back-to-the-wall
fight. However, the Arab blitz did not materialize and the first
three days of the renewed war brought the same small-scale ding-
dong fighting as before.

Tuesday

The greatest military event yet in the whole war : the Israeli
Army has captured Lydda, Ramleh and a number of Arab
villages around. The Arab Legion has pulled out into the Judaean
hills round Latrun, but even Latrun is in danger of being out-
flanked by the Israelis.

We visited Ramleh a few hours after it was taken. It has not
been seriously defended, and after the Legion withdrew the town
immediately hoisted the white flag. The Arabs were hanging
about in the streets much as usual, except for a few hundred youths
of military age who have been put into a barbed wire cage and were

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 271

taken off in lorries to an internment camp. Their veiled mothers
and wives were carrying food and water to the cage, arguing with
the Jewish sentries and pulling their sleeves, obviously quite un-
afraid. A man in European dress, mistaking my correspondent's
badge for officer's insignia, introduced himself as a local chemist
and asked for permission to re-open his drug-store, which I granted
unhesitatingly. Groups of Arabs came marching down the main
street with their arms above their heads, grinning broadly, without
any guards, to give themselves up. The one prevailing feeling
among all seemed to be that as far as Ramleh was concerned the
war was over, and thank God for it. I have rarely felt more
intensely not the injustice, but the complete unnecessariness of
this war.

Thursday

The air raids have started again ; on Tuesday there were twenty
people killed by several bad hits, but yesterday nobody.

On Tuesday I gave a talk to the Rotary Club about the cultural
problems of the future : the task of creating a new style of life
adapted to the new environment, avoiding the traps of provincial-
ism, chauvinism, levantinism. The response was frankly hostile,
and when I ended with a plea for less Jewish and more European
history in the schools and for the latinization of the alphabet, I
thought I was going to be stoned with the cream-buns from the
buffet. " If he thinks Western culture so wonderful, 5 * wrote an
evening paper the next day, " what's he doing in Israel ? "

Friday

Last night we went to a party where I talked to a girl who was
brought up in the Herzlia Gymnasium, Israel's leading secondary
school. She had to learn long passages of the Bible by heart ;
some of the questions at her closing exam were : " What did
God say to Jeremiah ? " " What is written in the Seventeenth
Chapter of the First Book of Moses ? " She also had to learn
Talmud, but the only thing she could remember about it was
" something about the things you have to do and say if you find
tomatoes fallen from a cart in the street ".

Sunday

The Arabs, having taken a frightful beating, have agreed to
renew the truce.

272 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

The Arab League is rapidly breaking up, with Ministers
resigning for reasons of health everywhere from the Euphrates
to the Nile. The new truce looks like the beginning of the end.

Friday

A few days ago Irgun soldiers in Jerusalem arrested five
Englishmen, alleged to be spies. After some haggling they handed
them over to Haganah. Now Ben Gurion has given an interview
to Cy Sulzberger of the New York Times in which he said in the
same breath that the Englishmen had been " kidnapped " by
Irgun, and that the Government is going to bring them to trial.

Ben Gurion behaves at times rather like a pocket dictator.
The common denominator of these paternal despots of the Left
is the conviction that democracy is a good thing in theory, but
that they just happen to know what is best for their own people
in their particular country. These matey, hectoring trade union
bosses Ebert, Bevin, John Lewis, etc. are the sergeant-
majors of the Labour Movement, who have come to replace the
bold knights of the socialist idea.

Saturday

Counterpoint : tea with an old planter family in Petakh Tiqwa.
Endless complaints about socialist totalitarianism. But their garden
is going to seed because since the war they can't get any more
cheap Arab labour, and refuse to employ Jews at trade union rates.
That's what Israel would be like without " socialist terror ".

Monday

Week-end in Nazareth and Haifa. I have never liked Nazareth
with its monasteries like army barracks, its absence of bazaars, its
corrupt Christian Arab population of tourist touts and souvenir
pedlars. Since they were conquered by the Israeli Army they
seem to have become even lazier, sulking in the cafes over their
games of tric-trac.

In Haifa Abram Weinshall took me to the house of a rich Arab
who is more or less the spokesman of the remaining Arab popula-
tion of about two thousand. We spoke French ; Mr. T., who is
a Christian Arab, explained that he had stayed behind because if
choose he must, he would rather live in a Jewish than in an Arab
state, " You have no idea, Monsieur, what it means to live under

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 273

Arab rule : no freedom of expression, no civilized life." He said
this attitude was less exceptional among Christian Arabs than it
might seem. This said, he launched into a long list of com-
plaints : that the Arabs in Haifa are not allowed to walk in the
Jewish quarters. ; that they are debarred entry to the Town Hall ;
that they don't get their rations ; that the property of those who
have left has been looted ; and that all this was a bad and short-
sighted policy on the part of the Jews, who should give an example
to the world how to treat minorities. Most of which is true,
though only half the truth.

Then came another torrent of complaints and laments. Sud-
denly it struck me that speaking for a minority with a justified
grievance, Mr. T. was behaving exactly as the Jews used to
behave. It was the same mixture of sob-talk and casuistry, the
same wearying relentlessness in airing complaints, in playing on
the other man's bad conscience until his perfectly good case
was lost in the exasperation caused by constant over-emphasis.
Jews are created not by race, but by conditions.

Tuesday

Watched the arrival of the Russian diplomatic mission,
acclaimed by a crowd of approximately a hundred people, the
majority of whom cheered, while a minority booed. On his
arrival in Haifa, the Soviet Minister to Israel, Yershov, made the
following laconic statement to the assembled Press, local and
foreign :

" We have arrived. Now we are here. That is the best news
I can give you," (Applause.)

Saturday

Yesterday an old, almost blind man ,came to see me, feeling
his way through the room with a stick. He is Dr. R., formerly a
deputy in the Rumanian Parliament and President of the Rumanian
Zionist Organization. When the Red Army occupied Rumania,
he learned that he was high on the list of those marked for deporta-
tion. He also heard that one of the few grounds on which people
were exempted from deportation was blindness. He persuaded
a surgeon friend to perform a double iretectomy on him, depriving
him of sixty per cent of seeing-power in one eye, seventy per cent
in the other. In spite of this he was taken on a stretcher from the
hospital to the deportation train, but unloaded again when he

T

274 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

seemed to be dying. He left me the manuscript of a book he has
written. . . .

Sunday

Listened to Beigin's first public speech in Tel Aviv in an
open-air cinema, with thousands thronging in the streets and on
the roofs of the houses around. It was a disappointing speech
emotional rhetorics without a constructive programme. There
are periods when the cart of history has to be pushed in blind
enthusiasm and rage ; once the hump is passed the time has
come to survey the landscape with open eyes.

The phenomenon of discontinuity in history : if a backward
nation has missed certain stages in its development the rise of
capitalism, the ascent of its middle classes, the storming of its
Bastilles can it ever fill the gap ? In organic development the
embryo has to repeat the story of the race ; but in social evolution
such nations are made to jump from phase B to phase E by external
over-stimulation. Example : the Japanese, the Arabs, in a
different way the Jews. Can such nations ever become socially
sound and balanced without reverting to the missed phases C and
D ? Alexis says Karl Polanyi is lecturing on a similar theme, based
on Malinovsky.

Parallel : people who miss their childhood by having, through
external circumstances, responsibility forced on them too early ;
infant prodigies who have never played marbles.

Monday

The British are carrying on in the Security Council as before.
Water should only be supplied to Jerusalem after Israel has agreed
to the return of the Arab refugees (a potential fifth column of some
three hundred thousand) ; the internees of Cyprus are still kept
behind barbed wire as hostages. And Russia marches on. Never
has the fate of the world been administered by such little men.
Never have so few done so much harm to so many.

More crank visitors. Among them a German who cures
diseases by soul-waves and mana. He has a mana-drdt in Tel
Aviv, and I am to collaborate in making propaganda for Israel
abroad on soul-wave lines. Another one wants me to start a
campaign to propagate Hebrew morse signals.

The monomaniac taking to a fixed idea is the Jewish equivalent
of the Englishman in the tropics taking to drink.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 275

Wednesday

First Israeli-Soviet diplomatic incident. The Soviet Mission
went to a concert to which both they and the American envoy,
Macdonald, were invited. As Yershov did not turn up, only his
staff, the orchestra played the American, but not the Soviet
anthem ; so in the first interval the Russians walked demon-
stratively out. Rumours, explanations, apologies, and now all
is well again.

Thursday

Dinner with N., one of the old leaders of the Zionist movement
in Europe. Now he lives in Jerusalem, but as he does not belong
to the inner circle of Mapai, nor even to any of the other parties,
he can't get a job, says " I am a forgotten man ". N. would make
an excellent ambassador to any western European country ; but
owing to the closed-shop system of political coteries, most of the
diplomatic jobs go to little yes-men who will set the European
chancelleries bristling as the old Jewish Agency did.

Friday

Bergson has grown a beard in prison and looks like a gentle
little rabbi. Somebody brought him a bottle of brandy in jail
which he polished off in three weeks ; this earned him the reputa-
tion of an alcoholic. He quarrelled with the prison guard, told
him rashly that this was worse than a Nazi concentration camp.
The guard showed him the Dachau number tattooed into his
forearm, and asked to be transferred to another job.

Saturday

M. is back from a week's holiday in Cyprus. In the visitor's
book of the English hotel in Famagusta where she spent a night,
a lot of people had written in the " Coming from " column :
Israel. This was crossed out in each case, with the comment :
" does not exist ". So she added in each case " yes it does ".

Our balcony has become a sort of club where all kinds of people
drift in and out in the evenings, most of whom are not on speaking
terms with each other. There are always tense moments with
M.'s voice chiming in : " Now what would you like to drink ? ",
followed by the stern rebuff : " Lemonade ".

Among the visitors : a Trotskyite architect from New York,

270 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

a Canadian fur dealer, lots of South Africans, all volunteers in the
Israeli Army ; and a little French boy of fifteen who came on the
Altalena and would like to go back home to school but can't raise
the money for his ticket which the French Consul has refused
him although his parents were killed in the Resistance and he is
a " pupille de la nation ".

Sunday

The last few days I spent mostly in Government offices collect-
ing material. All Government offices are concentrated in Sarona,
an eighteenth century colony of German Templars on the out-
skirts of Tel Aviv. The Templars, who all turned Nazi, have left,
and their dusty little houses, each surrounded by a derelict garden,
have now been turned into the various Ministries. Bulldozers are
working all day to make the cart-tracks into roads, and officials
with enormous brief-cases climb in and out of ditches to get from
one Ministry to another.

Spent an hour gossiping with Z., who now has a dud job in
the Ministry of the Interior another forgotten man of the Old
Guard. He told me how the Israelis discreetly sounded a Russian
diplomat in Lake Success about the right type of person to repre-
sent them in Moscow. The Russian said : You probably think
you should send somebody who speaks Russian to perfection and
knows Pushkin by heart. But that is of no importance. You
may also think that you should send somebody who knows exactly
how many tons of pig-iron are produced under the Five Year Plan
and how many inches of rain fall in Galilee. But that is of no
importance either. You may further assume that your ambassador
should be thoroughly acquainted with the history of the Bolshevik
Revolution. But that's least important of all. What I suggest
is that you should send somebody who is a member of your
ruling party and has the full confidence of the leader of your
Government as is our practice.

They offered the job to Goldie Meyerson, who said : " I speak
not a word of Russian, have never read Pushkin, know nothing of
pig-iron and rain and have entirely forgotten what Stalin and
Trotsky quarrelled about." So Goldie got the job.

Monday

Schaerf, Chief Secretary to the Government, told me some
stories about the trivia of state-making.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 277

One of the difficulties was that nobody in the Jewish Agency
had the faintest idea about diplomatic protocol, about the pro-
cedure of having the National Flag copyrighted or whatever it's
called, and the like paraphernalia of statehood. When they had
to accredit the first Israeli envoy the one to Czechoslovakia

they borrowed the Exequatur of the only foreign consul
available at the time in Tel Aviv, who happened to be the consul
of Guatemala, and cribbed the text of it.

Also, they had a dress-rehearsal for the reception of Yershov,
with the Chef du Protocol, Dr. Simon, playing Yershov's part.
He started twice addressing Ben Gurion with " Your Excellency "
until B. G., waking from his dreams, sUid : " Mi zeh ? Aniy ? "

" Who's that ? Me?"

Even earlier, during the civil war, Schaerf and others were
preparing long drafts about the administrative structure of the
future state, but couldn't quite believe that one day it would really
come into being, nor take their own plans quite seriously. When
some sub-committee, which they had forgotten ever having
appointed, one day produced sketches for the future Israeli
postage stamps, they all burst out laughing. From time to time
Ben Gurion, who was only interested in matters military, would
ask Schaerf : " Is it true that you are preparing a State ? "

Wednesday

The war is over, and the elections have been postponed ; so
we probably shan't stay much longer, and to round off the picture
I made last week a kind of Grand Tour of the members of the
Government.

They are a fairly homogeneous team, and, with few exceptions,
share the same Eastern European small town background. Their
manners are informal and democratic, and are best characterized
by the story about Ben Gurion, who on arriving at a gathering of
friends straight from a diplomatic reception in striped trousers
and a black coat, apologized for not having had time " to change
out of his working clothes ".

There are few exceptions as far as social and cultural back-
ground are concerned. One is the Minister of Justice, Dr. Felix
Rosenblueth half hefty Bavarian, half Jewish lawyer. He has
assembled around him an excellent staff of German legal experts ;
on entering his Ministry one is transferred from Cracow to the
Weimar Republic. The opposite extreme is Shitreet, the only

278 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Sephardi Jew in the Government, Minister for Minorities and
Police. He used to be a police officer under the British Mandate.

With Ben Gurion I had a two hours' talk yesterday in his
flat. He has aged considerably since I last saw him in 1945 ;
short and stocky, his broad, Judeo- Slavonic head is bald in the
middle, with tufts of white hair sticking up on both sides which
gives him the look of a temperamental patriarch. He speaks with
great warmth and persuasion, if not always with a ring of sincerity.
About half the time was taken up with politics, meaning Russia ;
the other half with cultural questions. On the latter we disagreed
entirely. He said for instance something to the effect that " Jewish
democracy is older and deeper than so-called Western democracy ;
we want to build a native Jewish democracy, not to imitate the
West ". That's good enough as a sonorous phrase at a meeting,
but the fact is that ancient Israel was a theocracy and never a
democracy ; that since it ceased to exist the Jews have had no
democratic experience as a nation ; that Israel's Constitution,
which is now being drafted, is of course based on Western
models ; and that Israel, if it is to be a modern nation, must, not
imitate, but assimilate Western tradition. To this B. G. answered
that I had not the faintest idea what Jewish tradition meant;
every Jew was an aristocrat, even if a proletarian ; it wasn't true
that there was a two thousand years' gap in Jewish history ;
although during that time Jews couldn't administer themselves
politically, they carried the spiritual heritage with them and con-
tinued to live with the Prophet Ezekiel while waiting for the
Messiah. I answered that this was exactly what I meant : they
had lived in the past and in the future, but not in the present ;
that is what I call the gap in experience and social evolution.
Where are Israel's Luthers, Cromwells, Galileos ? At the time
when Shakespeare wrote his tragedies, the only event in Hebrew
literature was Rabbi Lurie of Safed's cabbalistic exercises.

Ben Gurion repeated paternally that I knew nothing of Jewish
tradition ; nor, he added, did a number of his colleagues in the
Government he mentioned the names of several, all of German
or Western European origin. Besides, I need not worry about
losing touch with Western civilization, as within ten years every-
thing ever written worth reading will have been translated into
Hebrew.

All this would not be serious if Ben Gurion could be dismissed
as a narrow-minded bigot. But in fact he is a Socialist, and more-

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 279

over a Greek scholar specializing in Plato. Israel's first Prime
Minister is a strong man of action with intellectual leanings, not
an ignoramus. His attitude is the result of that deep-rooted
complex cultural claustrophilia. It is perhaps the most general
common denominator of the population of Israel, however much
they may otherwise differ by their country of origin, their cultural
of social standards. No party, group or individual is entirely
immune from it from the orthodox rabbis to -the extreme left.

Friday

Bernadotte has been murdered.

The P.I.O. was like a disturbed ant-heap ; several girl secret-
aries crying, the press officers and censors looking panicky, the
correspondents in the euphoria of once more living through
historic events. In the streets and cafes the reaction was one of
unmitigated horror. Everyone seemed to feel that the bullets
that riddled the Mediator's body had torn into the State's own
precarious texture. As the news spread along the sea-shore
among the festive Shabbath-eve crowds, a cloud of dismay seemed
suddenly to descend. Low-voiced groups gathered at the street-
corners ; it was startling to see women crying at the death of
a man who was a stranger in Israel and politically detested by
almost everybody. But they understood that the United Nations'
Mediator was a symbol in the world's eyes ; and the old inherited
knowledge of the Jew, the Negro in the Southern States and of
all hunted minorities told them that, however united they are in
condemning the deed, its blood will be on their heads.

We went to a cafe on the beach which is frequented mainly by
Sternists and is used by them as a kind of soldiers' club. This
place usually closes about n P.M., but tonight, though it was
much later, there was a revelling crowd there dancing Horra and
Cracowiak. They are a queer, picturesque 'and ambiguous lot of
fierce-looking Yemenite gun-molls, Sephardi beauties and young
men of dashing countenance. Some of them wear long side-
whiskers ; others the Negev type of moustache and beard. Par-
ticularly remarkable was a young man in navy blue tight trousers
and a green shirt, with a black patch over one eye and a dagger
flapping on his buttocks, dancing last -century Montmartre
apache style. Then a Sternist girl came in who once made inter-
national news by engaging in some wild and pointless terrorist
activities in Western Europe. She is a little chit of a girl of great

vivacity, and entirely infantile. What she needs is a good talking-to
by a nice, reasonable Jewish mamma, but as it happens her nice
Jewish mamma was killed by the Gestapo, and that started her on
her career as a pocket-heroine.

It was all pretty disgusting, but the one thing which had
unmistakably emerged was that the murder had taken the Sternists
themselves completely by surprise. Behind their knowing airs
and awkward jokes, they were hiding their uncertainty as to
which line to take. It is a fundamental tradition of Palestine
terrorism to assume immediate responsibility for each act com-
mitted ; but in this case the Stern Group has not done so, and the
members of the Group have obviously received no inside directives
whether to approve of the murder or decline responsibility for it.
In fact they were as disconcerted by the news as everybody else,
though their automatic reaction to it was of course a different one.

At the P.I.O. by that time everybody was more or less drunk.
We went home and I wrote an article which, after an account of
public reactions, went on :

" To the outside observer the assassination of Count
Bernadotte may appear as belonging to the same category as
the former terrorist actions. But both objectively and in the
public's psychological reaction this is essentially a new develop-
ment. The underground struggle against the hostile mandatory
Power conformed, whatever one's opinion about the rights and
wrongs of the case, to a classic and recurrent historic pattern.
Hence the murderers of Lord Moyne, the gaolbreakers of
Acre, the operators of secret radio stations, enjoyed the passive
sympathy of a considerable section of the population, even
among those opposed to violence in principle. Public opinion
was equally divided when Irgun smuggled much-needed defence
arms and clashed with the Government. At that time I pointed
out that both sides had an arguable case. But this time such
considerations do not apply. There is historical logic in violence
versus oppression, in the illegal rescue of the homeless, in gun-
running for the defence of a small country invaded by several
big ones ; there is no logic and no conceivable justification to
the sane mind for Sten-gunning the representative of an inter-
national body, even if his policy were regarded as objectionable.
Hence this time opinion is undivided against the handful of
runners-amok who perpetrated this crime. It is characteristic
that Irgun Z vai Leumi, by far the larger and more responsible
ot the so-called dissidents, has officially and categorically denied

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 281

any responsibility for the deed. This is the first time Irgun
has taken such a step, which completes the transformation of
the former underground body into a political party. This
significant development means that terrorism is dying out in
Israel except for a small body, numbering approximately 2,000
men, who are deprived of public support."

Friday

All evidence confirms that the Sternist leaders knew nothing
of the Bernadotte murder. But instead of condemning the act
outright they have issued ambiguous statements and pamphlets
which are neither here nor there and which implicitly condone it
by phrases like " Am I my brother's keeper ? " This seals their
fate. Some three hundred of them have been arrested, including
Friedman- Yellin ; the Government has issued an emergency
decree against terrorism which enables it to outlaw the Group.

I am sorry for a few individuals among them ; David Yellin,
with whom I had a moving encounter in 1945 ; Amikam, the
gentleman bank-robber; Scheib, whom I have never met but
who always reminded me of Nardi in The Magic Mountain. The
marxian dictum that man is a product of his environment has
never been more fitting than when applied to this group of young
fanatics. Stern's ideology was the ultima ratio of a tortured
people. Now once more history is repeating its dreary pattern
according to which the regicides must share the fate of their
victims. For, as Machiavelli drily remarked, " he who founds a
republic and does not kill the sons of Brutus, will only reign a
short time ".

The last Irgun units which had enjoyed special status in
Jerusalem have peacefully disbanded and joined the regular Army.

As for the actual assassins of Bernadotte, my hunch is that they
will never be found, and that they are protected by a power outside
the reach of Israel's police.

Sunday

C. of the American Delegation told me that some Sternist
has explained to him that I am an agent of British Intelligence.
That rather fits the pattern. Had tea, and drinks on the next day,
with Macdonald, the American Envoy. He is a nice, donnish type,
but I wonder whether an American don is the right match for
the propaganda and infiltration experts of the Soviet Mission.

For a while, before proper accommodation was prepared for them,
both the American and the Soviet delegations lived in the Gat-
Rimmon Yershov actually occupied our former room. The
stars and stripes and the hammer and sickle floating side by side
over the hotel fafade were the delight of all press photographers.
But it was less encouraging to know that one delegation would
immediately settle down to silent termite work, while the other
would carry on with its happy routine. Why can't they get over
a few bright young publicists from the New Leader or Partisan
Review crowd, to counteract the Russian propaganda which is
blowing in from all sides in this draughty corner of the world ?

Monday

On Thursday had a long talk with the head of the Education
Department, and on Friday with the Director of the Herzlia
school. Education in Israeli schools is at present based on quite
shocking principles. No doubt this is a transitional phenomenon,
but frank criticism is essential to hasten the end of this state of
affairs and minimize the damage to the young generation.

There are three officially recognized types of school, or
" educational trends " as they call it. Firstly, orthodox religious
schools, secondly " general " schools, and thirdly socialist schools
run by the cultural department of Histadruth. 1 Thus from the
kindergarten onwards children are systematically conditioned on
political or religious lines, and have a bias instilled into them
which affects their whole outlook on life according to their parents'
choice ; moreover the three competing " trends " tend to per-
petuate class divisions and make adherence to a political party
hereditary as it were.

The religious schools which, according to the Education
Department's figures, are attended by twenty-three per cent of all
children between the ages of four and eighteen, make their pupils
quite unfit for twentieth century life. Unlike some Catholic lay
schools in Western Europe, which provided a solid all-round
education and were sometimes quite outstanding, the Orthodox
seminaries stuff their pupils' heads with mediaeval scholastic
exegesis almost to the exclusion of any other branch of knowledge.

The socialist schools are attended by twenty-seven per cent of
all children of the primary school age, mainly in the collective
settlements and big towns. Their level varies from place to place

1 Histadruth : the Hebrew Federation of Labour.

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 283

according to local conditions, and their methods are experimental,
with much avant-garde dilettantism and some promising aspects.
They aim at some form of synthesis between Biblical tradition
and a superficial, simplified marxist philosophy.

Secondary education, from fourteen or earlier to eighteen, is
to an extent of eighty per cent carried out by the " general "
schools. In the average general secondary school, children at
the age of fifteen have to devote, out of a total of 35 school hours
per week, 4 hours to studying the Bible, ij hours to studying
Talmud, 5 hours to studying Hebrew literature; but only ij
hours to the study of history, which means mainly Jewish history.

The director of the Herzlia Gymnasium explained to me the
method of teaching political geography. The first difficulty, he
said, is to convince Palestine-born children that there are Jews in
other parts of the world who are their kin. This is done by
explaining to the children that the work of rebuilding Israel
depends economically on those alien Jews, through their donations
to the Keren Kayemeth the Jewish National Fund. " Chile
does not mean anything to a little Israeli child until he learns
that so and so many pounds have been collected by the Keren
Kayemeth in Chile. Then suddenly Chile becomes a reality."

History is taught by an equally egocentric system. For the
study of antiquity the Bible serves as the main source, and Israel as
the hub of the ancient world. The confused events of the Dark and
Middle Ages are summed up as a series of migrations by barbarian
tribes anti-clockwise round the Mediterranean, while the Jewsinthe
same period migrated clockwise in the opposite direction. And so on.

All this reminds me of the first school I went to in Budapest.
The Hungarians too, as a small nation wedged precariously be-
tween the Slavonic and Germanic worlds, were inclined towards
this kind of mystical ultra-chauvinism. One of the first poems
I had to learn by heart was Petofy's classic :

If the globe is the cap of God
Hungary is the feather in the cap. . . .

Not all teachers in Israel take an equally centripetal view of
the world at large ; but the majority do, particularly of the older
generation, who themselves have been brought up in religious
seminaries, and who occupy most of the responsible posts. Among
the younger teachers I met some good modern types who one day
will break the power of the old fogies.

One shouldn't be too hard in passing judgment on what is
no doubt a transitory and inevitable phenomenon. Israel can't
become a nation without passing through a phase of intense
nationalism. It is part of the process of filling in the gap. In
ten to fifteen years' time the young people of the next generation
will get fed up with all this provincial chauvinistic stuff, with the
prophets and pharisees around them, and start flinging open the win-
dows to the great world outside. The sooner it happens the better.

Tuesday

Another curious feature of the native generation is their
retarded maturity, a mild form of psycho-sexual infantilism. It
may have something to do with the change in climate or diet, but
nobody knows. The children of my old friends give at twenty-
five the impression of being eighteen. Characteristic is Mala's
story of a married girl of twenty-four, who kept on playing with
dolls, although she was pregnant.

Wednesday

Went with Mala to visit Jaffa jail where most of the Sternists
are kept. At the gates we found a disorderly scrum of female
relatives fighting to get in first, the inexperienced guards trying
in vain to get them into an orderly queue. All the frames, window-
panes and doors have been smashed up by the detainees, who
rule the prison in a kind of perpetual pandemonium. Boys and
girls sit together on the window-sills ; this is the first coeducational
or rather cohabitational prison in the world. Saw Stanley
and Amikam the latter as quixotic as ever: "We are not
imprisoned we are besieged. Yesterday I exceptionally per-
mitted the prison governor to enter our living quarters for some
plumbing inspection, but that was the only time." The young
fanatics are having the time of their lives ; the middle-aged are
tired and fed up with the pointlessness of the whole thing. The
Government is at a loss what to do with them as there is not a
shred of evidence to implicate anybody in the Bernadotte murder.

Monday

Jewish New Year's Day the first in Israel. Everything
closed ; no cars, buses, cinemas, restaurants.

The Jerusalem Truce Commission and the Israeli Military
Governor (who is technically responsible for the lack of security-
measures to protect Bernadotte) are exchanging diplomatic notes

PROPHETS AND PHARISEES 285

with accusations and counter-accusations that read like the Fish-
wives' Morning Gazette.

Sunday

The Sternists in Jaffa have staged a bloodless jail-break.
Yesterday was visiting day, but as the prisoners had beaten up a
police officer, the visits were cancelled as a punishment. The
women at the gate started protesting, and at that the prisoners
threw mattresses through the windows and jumped out. After
a short scrap the police on guard surrendered their arms into the
safe custody of the prisoners " to avoid ", as they said, " a second
Altalena ", and in exchange for a promise that the arms would
be returned to them in the evening. The prisoners then more
or less took possession of Jaffa, crowded into cafes or went for a
swim in the sea. A police sergeant served everybody with free
beer from the canteen, and Stanley gave a press conference in
his cell. In the evening they all flocked back to the prison except
those who had hitch-hiked to Tel Aviv, and whom the military
check-posts would not allow to return as they had no passes.
Some of them thereupon went back to Jaffa in a rowing-boat.
To-day everything is quiet again ; all the prisoners except two
have gone back to jail. The arms were returned to the police ;
there were no casualties.

All this is pure Alice in Wonderland to the stranger to Israel.
In fact it is a postscript to the old complicated game between
Haganah and Sternists. The only aim of the Sternists' jail-break
was to cover the Government with ridicule, in which they fully
succeeded. The Army and Police preferred ridicule to bloodshed,
remembering how narrowly the country had bye-passed the danger
of civil war at the time of the Altalena ; and also because they all
have an uneasy conscience towards the terrorists who, hardly out
of British prisons, are now in Israeli prisons. Everybody con-
demns the Bernadotte murder and the Stern Group in general,
but at the same time feels that the latter were never given a fair
chance to return to the fold and become normal citizens again.

Tuesday

Went to Haifa to get my return visa at the British Consulate
which, it having moved to new premises, I couldn't find for about
an hour, as no taxi-driver or policeman knows where it is. This is
a rather fantastic state of affairs in a country where six months ago

286 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

all public offices were British. At last I found it on the top floor
of an unfinished building. Harriot the Consul has gone to
London ; his deputy sat with a resigned expression behind a
desk, holding the fort. I was probably the only customer the
Consulate had seen for days.

There are rumours in the papers that " opposition in the
Cabinet and among Labour M.P.s against Mr. Bevin's Palestine
policy is growing ". For the last three years not a month has passed
without the same rumours reported in almost identical words.

Wednesday

Preparing to leave.

To-day is Atonement Day and the town is as dark and dead
as a town can be.

I wonder what Israel will be like the next time. I have seen it
change, since my first stay in 1926, with the rapid, jerky move-
ments of a growing plant in one of those quick-motion films which
telescope weeks into seconds. Already I hear myself explaining
to fellow- tourists in 1953 : " You should have seen the state this
country was in five years ago. ..."

I have been looking for a fitting end for this diary. The other
night Professor Marcus, the surgeon, provided me with one over
the best bottle of Moselle I have had for years. It is the story of
how the Lord got thoroughly fed up with mankind and decided
to arrange for a second Flood ; but this time it was to be a
thorough job with thirty fathoms of water everywhere, and there
would be no Ark and no Dove. The Lord despatched the Arch-
angel Gabriel to make the decision known to all concerned.
When Gabriel had delivered his message to the leader of the
Moslems, all Moslems turned towards Mecca and started praying
for a cushy corner in Paradise, with houris and wine. Gabriel
went on to the leader of all the Christians, and the Christians all
over the earth fell to their knees and prayed for forgiveness of
their sins at the Last Judgment. Finally the Archangel broke
the news to the leader of the Jewish community, who began to
. scratch his beard and gave a great sigh.

" Lord," he said, " what a difficult life it will be under thirty
fathoms of water."

BOOK THREE

PERSPECTIVE

" The Jews are like other people, only more so. . . ."

Anon.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL

I. The Trade Union Empire

The State of Israel may be defined as an anachronistic ideal
realized by ultra-modern means. A powerful international
organization works for the transformation of the most cosmo-
politan people of the world into citizens of a miniature State.
A race of born linguists turns back to a language which has been
dead for two thousand years. The children of the pioneers of
international trade take pride in living in collective settlements
where the use of money is abolished. Israel's clock is turning
back full circle but it is an electric clock on a functional fa9ade.

This paradox permeates the whole cultural, economic and
political life of the new State. As a result, Israel's social structure
has developed into a unique phenomenon, whose study will
fascinate sociologists for some years to come.

According to the figures submitted by the Jewish Agency to
the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry in 1946, 24 per cent
of the workers in Israel are engaged in agriculture, but among
the European fathers of these workers only 4 per cent worked in
agriculture. 40 per cent of the workers in Israel are engaged in
building, transport and factory work, but among their fathers
abroad the corresponding figure was only 18 per cent.

Generally speaking, out of 100 workers in Palestine the fathers
of 50 were traders abroad, and the fathers of 13 had " undefined
occupations ". These figures contain in a nutshell the formula
of the social transformation which Jewry undergoes in Israel.
Practically everywhere else in the world the trend of social
migrations is a " horizontal " drift from village and agriculture
to town and industry, and a " vertical " drift from working-class
to middle-class occupations.

In Palestine, as our statistics show, this tendency was reversed.
The children of urban-middle- and lower-middle-class parents
migrated into farming and into the industrial proletariat. And
just as, in other countries, the ablest and most ambitious are the
first to move from village to town, from a proletarian to a bourgeois

289 U

290 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

status, so here it was also a selected vanguard which led the
movement " back to the land " and " back to manual work ",
according to the tenets of Zionist ideology.

This ideology has already been discussed in an earlier chapter.
Until the French Revolution, the Jews in Europe lived mostly
segregated in ghettoes, divided from the soil and from socially
creative work ; they became, by force of circumstance, a nation
whose bulk was composed of middlemen, petty traders and social
parasites, with a crust of intellectuals. If the Jews were to make
a new start as an independent nation in Palestine, this lop-sided
social structure had to be righted and replaced by a normal social
pyramid with a broad, healthy base of farmers and manual workers.
But while in other countries the worker and peasant classes have
organically grown through centuries, in Palestine they had to be
artificially created ; the social pyramid here was built from the
top downward.

No wonder that this " artificial " working class, these voluntary
proletarians, became the socially and economically dominant
element in the country. No revolution and no social struggle
was needed to bring them into power ; it fell to them automatically
from the beginning of modern Zionist colonization. The body
in which this power is vested is the Histadruth^ the General
Federation of Labour in Israel.

Although affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions,
the Histadruth cannot be compared with the Western type of
Trade Union any more than, say, a Hebrew prophet with a teacher
at the London School of Economics. Histadruth is a creed and
cult ; its bureaucrats regard themselves as priests of the new
temple ; it is politically a State within the State and economically
a monopolistic trust. In other countries Trade Unions are sup-
posed to represent the interests of the workers towards the
employers ; Histadruth is both a Trade Union and the greatest
single capitalist employer in Israel. Its members embrace 75 per
cent of all wage-earners who, with their dependents, represent
more than half the country's total population, and the absolute
majority of the electorate.

This half of the population not only wields complete political
control over the country, but also forms an economically autarchic
and self-sufficient body. This is made possible by the numerous
cooperative and holding companies controlled by Histadruth,
which act as agricultural producers, marketing cooperatives, trans-

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL

port companies, bankers, factory owners, builders and retail
cooperatives, book and newspaper publishers and thus create
a practically closed market with a closed circulation of money
and goods. The most important of these economic enterprises
directly or indirectly controlled by the Histadruth include :
agricultural cooperatives embracing some hundred and fifty
collective settlements and some fifty smallholders' settlements ;
the marketing cooperative Tnuva which has the monopoly of
buying the total agricultural produce of the former, selling it
through its own chain stores and restaurants in the towns and
canning the fruit and vegetables in its own factories ; transport
cooperatives which have the monopoly of public transport in Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem, and a near-monopoly of cross-country bus
services ; the retail cooperative Hamashbir, which supplies half
the total population with goods and industrial commodities and
runs its own factories for shoes, textiles, rubber products ; and
finally, the building company Solel Boneh, which is the biggest
enterprise of its kind in the Middle East. Solel Boneh is a trust
within the trust, which owns a number of subsidiary industries
such as glass-works, foundries, brick factories and a shipyard.
It is at the same time the main shareholder of the country's biggest
factories cement and soap.

The financial enterprises of the Histadruth include banks for
agricultural credits, workers' credit and saving societies and a
life insurance company. The Histadruth's Sick Fund provides
medfcal care for half the population ; it runs 135 schools and 207
kindergartens of its own ; it has its own theatres, publishing
houses, sports clubs and so on. In short, half the population
has all its physical and cultural needs, from the cradle to the
grave, provided by the General Federation of Labour. Israel is
not a Socialist State ; but half of Israel forms a Workers' State
within the State.

The other half individual farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers
and artisans are economically and politically atomized. The
traditional opponent of Labour is Capital ; but in Israel the one
big capitalist trust is the Labour Union itself ; compared to the
Histadruth, all private employers are small fry. Consequently,
there is no class struggle in the traditional sense. Instead of it,
we have the unique phenomenon of the Labour Trust systematic-
ally knocking out of business its private industrial competitors
and then buying them up, by methods familiar from the history

292 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of the American steel and railroad companies, and prohibited
to-day by anti-trust laws in most capitalist countries.

In this economic battle no violence and not even threats are
needed ; no private employer can risk the fight, knowing that his
own workers have a vested interest in his competitor's victory.
The private industrialist can only survive in the long run by
coming to terms with the Histadruth. He may do this by selling
a controlling part of his shares to the Histadruth, as the country's
two biggest factories did. Or he may sell his factory altogether
and retain the post of managing director. Finally, he may go
into partnership with a cooperative formed by his own workers,
and indirectly controlled by Histadruth. It is a kind of aseptic
social operation, and as wages are pegged to the cost-of-living
index, there is no occasion even for local strikes. For a young
country this is certainly a promising social start ; the only
question is in what direction the road leads.

Is it a new, bloodless approach to Socialism ? As long as the
Jews lived under the British Mandate the autarchic organization
of Histadruth could be regarded as a nucleus of the future State.
But since the State has come into existence, the Labour Party,
which has a controlling majority both in the Histadruth and in
the Government, has shown no sign of any intention of putting
the Trade Unions' key enterprises under national control. There
are, on the other hand, numerous indications of the Trade Unions'
desire to remain a State within the State, to watch over their vested
interests, and to exclude the " marginal " half of the population
from the benefits of what they justly regard as their own exclusive
creation.

A characteristic example of this tendency is the development
of the bus cooperatives which, as already mentioned, have the
monopoly of public transport in the big towns and on the overland
ro^ds. Before the war the members of these cooperatives earned
in/shared profits up to ^Paoo per month ; a new immigrant want-
ing a job as a driver or bus conductor could only get it by becoming
a member of the cooperative through buying a share in it for the
fantastic sum of two thousand pounds. This, of course, hardly
any newcomer could afford, and transport cooperatives conse-
quently developed into a kind of exclusive workers' aristocracy.

This is an extreme example ; but similar tendencies can be
found in many realms of the Histadruth kingdom. It is certainly
not a Socialist tendency in any accepted sense of the word

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL

293

Socialism. It is not Capitalism either, nor Communism, nor
Syndicalism. It is a paradoxical product of a country which
came into existence under paradoxical conditions, without any
traditional class structure, without a bourgeoisie ; and with an
artificially created working class which took over the functions of
the former. This is one of the fascinating aspects of this society
of modern Europeans transplanted into an oriental environment ;
a society which has not grown organically but was created in the
laboratory of some idealistic Frankenstein, It is a tiny laboratory.,
but the results which it produces may assume a vast significance,
as happened once before in this country's history.

II. Tk Hebrew Labour Party '

Political Parties are the product of organic development in a
nation's history. The history of Israel as a nation contains a gap
from the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 71 to the reconstitution
of the State in May 1948. During those two thousand years the
nations of Europe underwent their slow social evolution towards
parliamentary life, civil liberties and security before the law ;
while the greater part of the Jews, during the greater part of this
period, lived outside the law or on the margin of the law, and
were excluded from the stream of social evolution. They only
maintained their separate identity by their stubborn clinging to
a petrified doctrine and to archaic rites a stagnant enclave in
a world in flux.

No race could have remained unaffected by such warping

1 To facilitate orientation among the various Parties in Israel which are
discussed in the following sections, the results of the elections to Israel's
Constituent Assembly on January 25,1 949, are given below. The list comprises
only the more important Parties and electoral blocks.

Party

No. of Votes
(in round figures)

Percentage
of Total

Seats
obtained

Labour Party (MAPAI)

155,500

34'?o

&

United Workers' Party (MAPAM)

64,000

H'54

19

United Religious Front

53,ooo

12-03

ifr

Freedom Party (formerly Irgun)

50,000

11-30

14 ^

General Zionists (liberal)

22,500

5-14

7 _*

Progressives (liberal splinter group)

18,000

4'04

Communists

15,000

3*44

4

Stern Group

5,500

I '22

i

Revisionists

3,000

o-6's

. .

Others

53,500

12-94

8

Total

440,000

100-00

120

294 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

influences. All the courage, self-sacrifice and initiative of the
Jewish pioneers in Palestine could not replace their lack of
political maturity and the lack of statesmanship of their leaders,
a direct consequence of that two thousand years' gap in political
tradition. As a Jewish witness put it in his statement before the
Royal Commission : " We are not an easy people to deal with.
... To a Jew who comes from the East of Europe an official is a
Tchinovnik (a Civil Servant under the Tsarist regime). He must
be corrupt. He must be hostile. He is the enemy of the
public. . . ." I

This deeply ingrained attitude played, as we saw, a consider-
able part in poisoning relations between the British Administration
and the Jews. The same ghetto-heritage of suspicion, intolerance
and self-righteousness is making itself felt in the internal politics
of Israel in this period of teething. This is equally true of the
Parties within the Government coalition and of those in opposition.
The common denominator of all of them is their emergence from
a historic vacuum, their absence of a civic tradition. Civic virtue
is not acquired through opting for a political theory ; it is un-
consciously absorbed by the individual growing up in a civilized
community. But the majority of the politicians of Israel spent
their formative years under regimes where the condition of survival
was circumventing the law. The birth-pangs of Zionist coloniza-
tion were the pogroms in Tsarist Russia at the beginning of
the century ; the midwives of Israel were the drunken Russian
soldiery, the German S..S., the terror-gangs of the Mufti. It was
a Caesarean birth in the sign of knife and forceps ; the gods of
justice, tolerance and humanism were absent from Israel's cradle.

Under these auspices the social psychologist might have pre-
dicted the development of an anarchic community based on
ruthless individualistic competition, without scruples or social
morality. Instead of which Palestine became the laboratory of
Utopian social experiments agricultural communes with common
property, industries based on cooperative enterprise, an economy
dominated by the workers' Trade Unions. The explanation of this
paradox is simple. Between 1880 and the beginning of the First
World War about three million Jews fled from Eastern Europe,
the majority of them to the U. S. A. ; but of these only fifty thousand
went to Palestine. Those who did so were naturally a selected
61ite. Instead of the fleshpots of America, they chose the desert.
1 Royal Commission Report, p. 119.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL

Instead of individual escape, they chose the collective ideal.
Instead of middle-class careers, they chose to become peasants
and manual workers, and thus created that voluntary proletariat
out of which eventually grew the Hebrew Trade Union Histadruth
and the Hebrew Labour Party, Mapai.

The ideal which animated these young men had a distinctly
messianic and somewhat confused character. Palestine was not
only to be the stage of a Jewish national renaissance, but also
a Socialist Utopia, an example to the world at large of how to
solve all its social problems. The biblical Essenes, Rousseau and
Tolstoi, Herzl and Marx, were the main sources of this messianic
Socialism. This heterogeneous ideological mixture was bound to
lead in the long run to internal conflicts and explosions. But
those early pioneers, in their creative enthusiasm, did not care
much about logical consistency.

The social achievements of the Hebrew Labour Movement
have been admired by all unbiassed observers. The imposing
structure of Histadruth's economic and financial enterprises has
already been described ; the communal farming settlements are
a fascinating experiment; the social services of the Labour
organizations may serve as a mo4el for many an older and richer
nation. Without the hard, intransigent fight of the Socialists
against the exploitation of cheap Arab labour, and for the principle
that every tenant on nationally owned land has to cultivate it with
his own hands, Palestine would have become just another colonial
country of rich planters and native underdogs. That it has
become instead what it is, and indeed the very existence of Israel
as a modern State, is to a large extent due to Mapai and Hista-
druth.

Against these admirable achievements must be set the negative
aspects of Mapai politics : intolerance of opposition, self-righteous-
ness, a budding dictatorial tendency. Historically, these are direct
consequences of that absence of political tradition already referred
to ; of the political vacuum from which the movement sprang.
It is true that its founders were a selected elite ; they were never-
theless a product of their social environment. Israel's first Prime
Minister, the Minister of Finance, and many of the other political
leaders, started their education in the Yeshivot, the religious
schools of Russian Jewry. Whatever universities they attended
later, the sing-song of Talmudic recitations, scholastic casuistry
and the zealotry which the jealous god of the ghettoes exacted

296 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

from its pupils had left their mark on them during their formative
years. Messianic Socialism cannot replace the organic growth of
democratic institutions and civic tradition ; fervent idealism is no
substitute for habeas corpus ; there is no short-cut from the
ghetto to Utopia.

It might have been hoped that thirty years of British Mandate
would fill in the historic gap and produce a new generation of
Jewish leaders imbued with the traditions of Europe's oldest
democracy. Unfortunately for all concerned just the opposite
happened. Although the Jews in Palestine lived in a state of
physical insecurity, their self-defence organization was never
legalized, and from the beginning to the end of the British
Mandate had to work underground. Similarly, the rescue of
Jews from the European massacre was made an illegal act. Once
again the Jews could only protect their lives and save some of
their kin by circumventing the law. British rule, instead of being
a school for democracy, became a school for conspiracy.

When Israel was born the Jewish nation emerged from an
underground existence which in the narrower sense had lasted a
decade, and in the broader sense for many centuries. A people
living underground must be single-minded, fanatic and intolerant
if it is to survive ; but these qualities, when carried over into open-
air politics, become a grave handicap. In the first few months
of the new State's existence they manifested themselves in the
Government's scantily disguised flaunting of democratic pro-
cedure and its indifference to legal form which led to such
paradoxes as the launching of a " voluntary " war loan that in fact
was compulsory, and the raising of public funds by methods
incompatible with the dignity of a sovereign State. There were
also some cases of arbitrary arrest and detention, justified post
factum by British war-time Emergency Regulations the same
regulations which the members of the new Government had un-
ceasingly denounced in the past. Within the Labour Party and
the Trade Unions the one-time pioneers have, as so often happens,
developed into a somewhat nepotistic coterie of the ancients, with
Prime Minister Ben Gurion exercising a kind of paternal despotism
over Government, Party, Army and country. To qualify for a
responsible position, and in some professions even to make a bare
living, the citizen in Israel must be on the right side of the angels
which, broadly speaking, means that he must be a member of
Histadruth, by preference a member of Mapai, and by preference

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 297

of Russo-Polish descent. And as Histadruth has direct control
over the economic existence of half the population, while Mapai
dominates the Government coalition, to oppose them means
courting exclusion from a political or administrative career, social
ostracism and sometimes also the risk of economic ruin.

These symptoms are certainly not unique ; similar develop-
ments can be found in our time in a number of other nations with
a long democratic past and with none of the excuses which the
young State of Israel can claim. They should therefore not be
overestimated ; but it is nevertheless true that these tendencies,
if allowed to continue unchecked, might have a warping influence
on the political life of the nation.

III. The Extreme Left

The Labour Party, Mapai, occupies the central position both
in the Government and in the rainbow of political parties in
Israel. The only important group to the Left of Mapai is the
United Workers' Party (U.W.P.), formed in 1947 by the fusion
of two Socialist splinter groups. 1

For a better understanding of the position of the U.W.P. it is
necessary to go back for a moment to the ideological roots of the
Palestine Labour Movement. I have mentioned earlier that the
ideals of this movement were somewhat confused and bound to
lead to internal conflicts. The principal contradiction in this
ideology was that between Socialism and Zionist Nationalism.
The proletarian, according to Marx, has no fatherland ; but the
Marxist-Zionists, instead of rejoicing that Jewry had got rid of
the burden of a fatherland, were turning the clock back to make
one. A number of brilliant theoreticians of the movement have
tried to resolve this contradiction with the magic wand of dia-
lectics. They never completely succeeded, and the history of
the Palestine Labour Movement consists of a series of schisms,
reconciliations and new splits, all hinging on the central problem :
whether National interest or Socialist doctrine should have the
upper hand in determining Labour policy in Israel.

The Mapai never arrived at a clear-cut theoretical decision ;
their practical policy, as the dominant Party in Jewish Palestine,

1 It is known by its Hebrew initials as Mapam ; to avoid confusion with
Mapai, I shall refer to it by its English initials.

298 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

was empirical and opportunistic. The Left Wing groups, on the
other hand, which were eventually to constitute the U.W.P.,
were doctrinaire revolutionary Socialists. The strongest of these
groups, Hashomer Hatzair, even opposed until the autumn of
1947 the idea of a Jewish State as a chauvinistic and imperialistic
aim, and advocated instead an Arab-Jewish binational State in
which the " toiling masses " of the two races were to unite against
the Arab effendis and the Jewish capitalists. Like most attempts
to apply Marxist tenets to backward native populations, it was a
programme utterly remote from reality the reality of the gulf
between twentieth -century Jewish civilization and fifteenth -
century Arab traditionalism, A hundred years or so of patient
effort might have narrowed down the gulf ; but it was obvious
that political events were moving at a quicker pace. In fact, the
young idealists of the Zionist Left never made any serious effort
to make themselves understood by the Arab workers, shopkeepers
and fellaheen. And when, on November 29, 1947, the United
Nations Assembly at last decided on Partition, they dropped all
binationalist pretences with an audible sigh of relief, and rallied
with enthusiasm to the Jewish National State, By that irony of
history which is so much in evidence in Palestine, the military
cadres of the extreme Left, Palmach, became the best and most
ferocious shock troops in Israel's national war against the Arabs.

Socialist internationalism having thus been defeated here as
elsewhere by the cold realities of our political ice age, there
remained the differences in internal policy between the Israeli
Labour Party and the U.W.P. The U.W.P. presses for a pro-
gramme not very different from that of the Left Wing of the
British Labour Party : the nationalization of key industries ; the
tightening of price and rent control ; a capital levy ; progressive
indirect taxation ; a State monopoly of foreign trade ; the transfer
of the Histadruth's economic enterprises and social services to
the nation. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of Socialist
planning in the world at large, it must be said that under the
specific conditions of Palestine the programme of the U.W.P. is
undeniably logical, as most of its points merely aim at the legaliza-
tion of a de facto state of affairs.

The constructive achievements of the groups united in the
U.W.P., and particularly their collective agricultural settlements,
are wholly admirable ; their social programme is radical, but not
unreasonable. In the field of international politics, however, their

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 299

attitude is as amateurish and divorced from reality as it was in the
days when they advocated a Judeo-Moslem class struggle against
the capitalist world. Their Socialist phraseology has remained
unchanged since 1917 ; absorbed as they were in their unique
experiment of creating a Lilliput Utopia at the cost of Brobding-
nagian effort in a country remote from Europe, the political
changes in the world have passed them by almost unnoticed.
Thus in this year of grace 1948 they were still at the stage of passing
resolutions with " greetings to the battle-hardened workers of the
Soviet Union, which is marching along the road of socialist con-
struction that casts its light over the workers of the world " and
so on. To put it bluntly, they are fellow-travellers of the nai'vest
sort, with touching illusions and an exasperating ignorance of the
facts of Soviet reality.

Thus of the two Socialist parties, Mapai, which is by far the
stronger, with 46 seats in the Constituent Assembly, pursues
an internal policy of opportunistic compromise. Its international
attitude is resentful towards Britain, officially neutral between
Russia and America, in fact pro-American. The U.W.P., with 19
seats, stands in internal affairs for a consistent Socialist programme,
and in foreign politics for collaboration with Russia, but of a rather
platonic nature.

For it should be made clear that this Party of somewhat back-
woodish pioneer romantics is neither a Communist Party nor
directly or, indirectly controlled by Moscow or the Cominform.
The whole history and psychological background of the U.W.P.
makes it unfit to become a satellite Party. It is more likely that the
first attempts at infiltration by what one might call the S.S.S.,
the Silent Soviet Services, will be met with a howl of protest by
the rustic pioneers of the collective settlements and will be followed
by a process of disillusionment. The ultimate development of
the U.W.P. will probably follow the pattern of the anti-Stalinite
Left, like the British Independent Labour Party, the Spanish
Syndicalists and the Trotskyites but distinguished from these
by an impressive record of positive social achievements.

Nevertheless the growth of popular sympathy towards the
Soviet Union, both in the U.W.P. and in the country at large,
should not be underestimated. The Russians were the first to
extend de jure recognition to Israel ; and when, in July 1948, the
Soviet Ambassador Yershov and his staff arrived in Tel Aviv, they
found the ground admirably prepared for them by the Western

300 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

powers. No diplomatic casuistry could hide the fact from the
people of Israel that an army under British command was waging
war against them. The almost weekly oscillations of American
policy, and the paradox that America recognized Israel but by
maintaining the arms embargo deprived it of its means of defence,
increased the general feeling of bitterness and disgust with the
West. Most important of all, when Operation Deluge left the
Jews with practically no arms to face the Arab invasion, Russian-
controlled Czechoslovakia was the only country which delivered
substantial quantities of arms to Israel and thus made possible its
physical survival.

The political sophistication of the Jews in general and of the
Labour Party in particular helped them to realize that Russia's
gesture was exclusively designed to serve her own political aims.
They remembered well that for thirty years Russia had persecuted
Zionism as a Fascist movement. The sudden and total reversal
of Soviet policy in October 1947 was too obvious a manoeuvre
to take them in. 1

They also remembered that until October 1947 the Jewish
Communist Party in Palestine had denounced Mapai and the
U.W.P. as " tools of Fascist imperialism ", had fought immigra-
tion and colonization, and that its policy could be summed up in
the motto : " Let's kick ourselves out from here ". Forever
discredited with the Jewish working class, they were and remain
an insignificant sect which polled at the elections on January 25,
1949, onl Y 15^48 votes Aat is 3-4 per cent of the total votes cast.
The U.W.P. itself only obtained 14-5 per cent of the votes as
compared to 24 per cent in the elections of 1944, a defeat
which must be regarded as a direct result of having advocated a
pro- Russian orientation.

In short, the majority of the Jews understood that Russia was
backing them, as a potential winning horse, for the same reasons,
though with a much shrewder perception of the realities of the
situation, for which the Foreign Office had backed the Mufti.
But such critical considerations could not prevent a spontaneous
surge of sympathy and gratitude among the politically more naive
layers of the population towards the only Great Power which sent
them arms and unwaveringly supported them in Lake Success in
the period of greatest danger. Hence the paradox that while the

Ru *** n policy has once more reverted to a violently

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 301

majority of Israel's working class remained immune from the
Stalinite lure, middle-class families in the Tel Aviv cafes applauded
over their cream buns the Russian marches played by salon
orchestras in the Viennese style.

It should be repeated that this attitude had nothing to do with
Marxism or any political doctrine, and was entirely a spontaneous
expression of an emotional leaning towards the only outside
country which they felt to be on their side.

" This correspondent ", I wrote in an article dated June
1948, " is hardly susceptible to Stalinite leanings, and yet, had
he suffered what people here have suffered in the past six
months, while one leading Western democracy waged an almost
undisguised war on them and a second looked on, the psycho-
logical pressure of circumstances might have turned even him
into a fellow traveller. Prime Minister Ben Gurion's speech
at the departure of the last British troops from Haifa left the
door open for a reconciliation with Britain and was a remarkable
proof that the leaders of the country have kept a cool head,
despite the burning pressure. But time is running short and
the time for mincing words is past. . . . This war of aggression
against a small state founded on a United Nations resolution
is waged by an army under British control. The remaining
Arab forces being strategically negligible, it depends on Britain
and on Britain alone whether and when this war will be stopped.
Some wars may be the result of historical fatality or inevitable
clashes of doctrine or power dynamics. This war is entirely
unnecessary and gratuitous. It is not caused by any incurable
antagonism between Palestine Arabs and Jews, but has been
artificially initiated and artificially prolonged by outside in-
fluence against the laws of morality and expediency. The only
party to derive profit from it is the totalitarian pretender waiting
to step in when the floods recede. It is a tiny country and a
tiny war, but a symbolic one. It looks as if Western civilization
were determined to commit suicide at the very place of its
birth."

The result of the first Israeli elections on January 25, 1949, have
proved that the great majority of Israel's working class has re-
mained true to its social-democratic and anti-totalitarian tradition,
despite Mr. Bevin's obsessions, Mr. Gromyko's lures, the sickening
jolts of American policy and the dismal blundering of the pseudo-
machiavellians in Whitehall. But there is a point where emotion
threatens to get the upper hand over reason, and in this respect
Israel shares the predicament of Greece, Spain and other peoples

3 02 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

on the border-line between the two World Powers.^ Their
great majority, like the majority of the " third forces " in the
political no-man's-land, incline to Western tradition if not by
profound conviction, at least by leaning towards the lesser evil.
And Israel, as always in its history, is a pointed and symbolic
example of a global pattern : of millions of war-worn, strife-
weary people longing to find peace in the camp which promised
them freedom from fear, and finding themselves repulsed and
pushed towards the counsel of despair.

IV* Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement

The Right Wing opposition movements in Israel Revi-
sionists and Freedom Party are the partly legitimate, partly
illegitimate spiritual descendants of a remarkable and much
misunderstood figure in Jewish history, Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Jabotinsky was a National Liberal in the great nineteenth-
century tradition, a revolutionary of the 1848 brand, successor to
Garibaldi and Mazzini. He was one of the most colourful figures
that modern Jewry has produced. He wrote prose in eight
languages, poetry in four, translated Dante and Poe into Hebrew,
Hebrew poetry into Russian ; his publications, under the pen-
name " Altalena ", range from novels to studies in comparative
phonetics. He was idolized by the young, endowed with
exceptional personal charm and a brilliant public speaker on
one occasion I saw him keep an open-air audience of several
thousands spellbound for five solid hours.

Jabotinsky created the first Jewish fighting force in modern
times : the so-called Judean Regiment which fought under British
command in Palestine in the 1914-18 war. When the Arabs
rioted in 1920 he organized the Jewish self-defence and was
sentenced for it by the British Military Administration to fifteen
years' hard labour, but amnestied after a few months. He was
elected a member of the Zionist Executive in 1921, came almost
from the beginning into conflict with his colleagues, resigned,
and created in 1925 the Party of Zionist-Revisionists and the para-
military youth organization Betar, out of which, through a process
of fissure and budding, the terrorist organizations were to develop.

The conflict between Revisionism and official Zionism was
mainly one of character and temperament ; it found its dramatic
expression in the long and bitter Trotsky-Stalin struggle between

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 303

their respective leaders. Coming from a race with a long history
but without a political background, neither of them had the true
political temperament. Dr. Weizmann is a distinguished chemist ;
bis approach to politics is the scientist's empirical, cautiously
hesitant, step-by-step method, tinged with a certain self-righteous-
ness and a deep distrust of the imaginative and unorthodox.
Jabotinsky was a litterateur, with the artist's broad imaginative
sweep, his intuition, impatience and emotionalism. Dr. Weiz-
mann's background is that of the Eastern Jewish masses ; he was
born in the small provincial town of Motl near Pinsk, was brought
up on traditionalist lines, and speaks the language to which the
Jews of Pinsk are prepared to listen. Jabotinsky came from the
intellectual centre of Odessa, was brought up in a cosmopolitan
environment, hated everything connected with Pinsk, and spoke
all his eight languages with the accent of an Italian opera baritone,
which is anathema to Jewish ears. He fought for the latinization
of the Hebrew alphabet, for the Westernization of Israel, which
was to become the seventh dominion of the British Common-
wealth, for a change in the spirit of Jewish education from the
Talmudic seminary to the British public school. In short, while
the psychology of official Zionism represented a continuation of
Eastern Jewish tradition, Jabotinsky and his Revisionists repre-
sented a complete break with it.

Jabotinsky was doomed to defeat, for reasons not unlike those
which led to the defeat of that other cosmopolitan Jewish litterateur
from Odessa, Leon Trotsky. The working classes were not ripe
for the International Revolution, and the Jews were not ripe
for their Garibaldian March revolution. Jabotinsky's insistence
on a Jewish State as the ultimate aim of Zionism was a mortal
heresy in the official Zionist Movement of fifteen years ago, and
led to the Revisionists 5 secession from it. Similarly, his demand
for a Jewish Army was branded as Militarism and Fascism, and
his plan for a mass evacuation of the doomed Jews of Central
Europe to Palestine immediately before the war was decried as
Utopian and irresponsible.

Jabotinsky died in 1940, at the age of 60, while engaged in
organizing a new international Jewish force to fight with the
Allied armies. In the light of present events, with the Jewish
State an established reality, almost every point of Jabotinsky's
programme has either been implemented by official Zionism, or
vindicated by the trend of events except his stubborn fight

304 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

against the Partition scheme. But though Israel was not ripe for
its Garibaldi, who was born a couple of decades too early and had
to pay the usual price which history exacts from her precocious
children, he is beginning to reap the posthumous rewards which
she bestows in such cases. In Israel's deficient Pantheon, where
whole centuries are represented by empty rows, he will fill the
place of the nineteenth-century liberal patriot that missing link
in the abrupt transition of Eastern Jewry from the Tsarist ghetto
to the advanced social experiment in Palestine.

Jabotinsky's is a spiritual heritage ; in Party politics he was
significantly unsuccessful. The Revisionist Party's development
was unfortunate from its beginnings. The gap in Jewish social
history to which I have repeatedly referred, the telescoping of
centuries of social evolution into a few decades, left no room for a
true national-liberal Party : it was crushed between ghetto and
Utopia. On the one hand, its national-revolutionary tenets and
Western orientation went against the traditionalist instincts of the
Eastern Jew. It is characteristic that Jabotinsky the nationalist
fought for the latinization of the Hebrew alphabet to break down
the barrier between Judaism and Western civilization, while the
internationalists of the Zionist Left rejected it as contrary to
Jewish tradition.

On the social front Revisionism tried to remain neutral, but
without success. The Revisionists' economic liberalism was
reactionary in the eyes of the Hebrew Labour Movement. In
nineteenth-century Europe social neutrality was possible within
limits for a patriotic reform Party ; in Palestine, whose history
reopens with the twentieth, it was not. If the Jewish State was
to become a reality, a Jewish mass immigration was needed
regardless of the social quality of the human material ; accord-
ingly, the Revisionists demanded a policy designed to attract small
capitalists and middle-class elements to Palestine, and turned with
vehemence against Labour's social experiments in agricultural
colonization as too costly and restrictive. Nothing could have
more provoked the Socialists, who justly regarded their collective
farms and cooperative industries as an outstanding social achieve-
ment and the very foundation of modern Palestine. And if a
Labourite gets angry the word Fascist comes as easily to him as
the word Communist to his opponent, and as some more rustic
invectives came to our forebears who did not yet swear in " isms ".
In truth, Palestine Labour was no more Communist than Leon

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 305

lum, and the Revisionists were no more Fascists than Garibaldi,
ut in the incomplete social spectrum of a country without
ristocracy, gentry and big capitalists, and without a Conservative
arty, it was inevitable that a Party of the Right Centre should
eputize in the public eye for an ultra-reactionary Fascist wing,
'hus history itself seemed to conspire to make T. E. Lawrence's
irrious dictum about the Semites having no half-shades in their
^gister of vision, and being only at ease when they think in
xtremes, come true again in the political life of Israel.

The bitter hostility between Revisionists and the Parties of the
.eft who dominated the official Zionist Movement came to its
Umax in the famous Arlosoroff murder case. Dr. Chaim Arlo-
oroff , the popular leader of Palestine Labour, was shot dead one
ummer night in 1933 on the beach between Tel Aviv and Jaffa,
.''he Revisionists had been conducting a violent political campaign
gainst Arlosoroff, and two members of the Revisionist Party were
rrested under suspicion of political murder. One was acquitted
traight away; the second, a .certain Abraham Stavsky, was
ondemned to hang in the first instance, but acquitted by the
ourt of appeal. His trial became one of the most fascinating
nurder cases on record, in which Arab footprint-trackers, British
ntelligence agents, political fanatics and hysterical women per-
brmed a forensic phantasia and whipped the country into a
>assion, echoes of which are still audible to-day after fifteen years.
The trial was Israel's Dreyfus Case ; though innocent of the
charge, the Revisionists were now definitely branded as Fascist
nurderers in the opinion of the majority. A short time after,
hey left the official Zionist Organization and founded the so-
;alled New Zionist Organization, which existed until 1947, and
patronized the Irgun and the Hebrew Committee of National
Liberation (Bergson Group) in the United States. Abraham
Stavsky's further career reads like a footnote by destiny to this
.urid affair : after his acquittal he became an organizer of illegal
.mmigration, successfully ran the British blockade thirteen times
md was killed on his fourteenth mission, the first to the new
Jewish State, when his ancient opponents of the Left, now trans-
formed into the Israeli Government, ordered the destruction of
the Altalena on the beach of Tel Aviv.

Thus, by force of historical circumstances, the political record
of the only strong non-Socialist opposition Party in Israel is one
of frustration and sterility. In, its early days the Revisionist

X

306 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Party comprised a good selection of young men of middle-class
origin, with as much initiative as their opposite numbers of the
Left. But for more than twenty years the members of the Party
have been barred from participating in the construction of the
National Home, and suffered virtual excommunication. Frustra-
tion and a chronic sense of grievance have turned them gradually
acid and sectarian, and made their ranks swell with a remarkable
number of cranks and monomaniacs. In matters of social policy
their opposition had originally been directed against certain costly
methods of colonization ; now, under the effect of the vitriolic
attacks of the Left, they took a frankly reactionary turn and
attacked with equal venom all that Labour had created agri-
cultural settlements, cooperative industries, social services, in
other words, the whole economic and social frame of modern
Palestine. In comparison to these imposing accomplishments of
the Left, the Revisionist opposition has hardly anything to show
in the field of constructive achievement ; and this, historically, is
their decisive weakness. In questions of foreign policy their
warnings have generally proved right, and most of their demands,
after being denounced as Fascist heresies, became gradually
incorporated into the official Zionist programme. But to repeat
" I told you so " does not make for popularity any more than to
seek remedy for an historical injustice by constant denigration of
the opponent's positive achievements. And, after all, this injustice
was due not so much to subjective causes as to the basic ana-
chronism in Israel's development, which was our starting-point
and which permeates all its political life ; to the fact that Western
Liberalism of the nineteenth-century brand came both too early
and too late for this country, and was passed over in its breathless
leap from ghetto to Utopia. 1

V. The Freedom Party

The Freedom Party, which polled at the elections 11-3 per cent
of the votes, is the political successor of the former Irgun Z'vai
Leumi, which shortly after the State of Israel came into being
transformed itself into a political movement, led by Irgun's leader,
Menachem Beigin.

Jewish terrorism has, as we have seen, a general and a specific

1 In the elections to the Constituent Assembly the Revisionists polled less
than i per cent of the total votes.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 307

aspect. The general aspect is simple enough, and conforms to an
eternal pattern in history. Oppression begets resistance, and each
resistance movement produces its rainbow-spectrum from oppor-
tunists through moderates to extremists. It is also inevitable that
the extremists should be condemned as madmen and thugs, or
hailed as patriots and martyrs, according to the observer's stand-
point. Their deeds, like all deeds of violence, are always repulsive
when seen in the close-up of contemporaneity ; in the perspective
of later times the lurid detail fades and only the historic conse-
quences of the act remain.

Jewish terrorism originated when the Mandatory regime turned
into a regime of oppression. The main facts will be remem-
bered : by preventing the immigration of Jews from outside
Palestine, and barring the Jews already inside from the purchase
of arable land, the regime cut off the former from their last chance
of escape, and condemned the latter to live in one more precarious
oriental ghetto. Incidents less tragic than the drowning of the
Struma refugees, and regimes less overtly hostile than Mr. Bevi$'s
in Palestine, have generated violent revolutions in history ; had
the Jews in Palestine not reacted in the same violent and ugly
way as other nations have in their hour of destiny, history would
have passed them by with a shrug, leaving it to the Mufti and the
Arab League to complete Hitler's work.

If, then, in their general aspect as resistance movements,
Irgun and Stern Group were legitimate children of history, in
their specific ideology they were an illegitimate offspring of
Jabotinsky's national liberalism. They treated, him as their
patron saint, as the Russians treat Karl Marx, and with about as
much justification. They have inherited the Revisionists' maxi-
malist programme, their contempt for the official Zionist leader-
ship, their sense of grievance and hatred of the Parties of the
Left ; but nothing of Jabotinsky's liberalism, Western orienta-
tion, European spirit. Their ideology was primitive chauvinism,
their language a stream of emotional bombast accompanied by
biblical thunderings. They were not Fascists, however, unless
we call the Maccabeans and the prophet Samuel Fascists too.
After all, it was this gentle prophet who ordered King Saul to go
and smite Amalek, and not to spare the women and aged ones
nor the suckling at its mother's breast. The Old Testament,
taken as a practical guide to twentieth-century politics, is a more
pernicious influence than Hitler's Mein Kampf.

308 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

After the proclamation of Israel's independence and the
departure of the British troops, the terrorists, emerging from their
underground hide-outs, had to face the problem of their political
future. Exposed to the sharp daylight of their newly-gained
legality, the difference in philosophy and method of action between
the two groups became increasingly apparent. and led soon to a
complete parting of the ways.

The Irgun had, even at the height of the struggle in its under-
ground days, rigidly observed its self-imposed " code of terrorist
honour ", and rejected the methods of indiscriminate assassination
and total violence which the Stern Group practised. As soon as
the chance offered itself, and in spite of the unabated hostility of
their former opponents of the Jewish Agency, now transformed
into the Provisional Government, Irgun achieved in a relatively
short time its remarkable transformation from a conspiratorial
underground group into a respectable " above-board " opposition
Party. Its military units were disbanded and incorporated into
the official Haganah at first in the territory of Israel proper
and, when the Government announced its official claim to modern
Jerusalem, in Jerusalem too. At the same time the Hebrew
National Committee of Liberation, Irgun's financial and political
sponsor in America, voluntarily liquidated itself to demonstrate
the complete break with the past and the new Party's uncondi-
tional acceptance of the authority of the Israeli Government.

As Irgun had been the military offspring of the Revisionists,
its transformation into a legal political Party immediately raised
the question whether Revisionism still had any separate raison
d'etre. The question led to a split amongst the Revisionists, whose
majority went over to Beigin. In the elections to the Constituent
Assembly the Freedom Party obtained 11-3 per cent of the votes
(14 seats), as compared to the Revisionist's 0*6 per cent and no seats.

The programme of the Freedom Party is vaguely progressive,
eclectic and colourless. Its one specific feature is the rather
rhetorical demand for a Jewish State " both sides of the Jordan ".
Its social programme, from the nationalization of the basic
industries to the reaffirmation of the Rights of Man, contains
hardly a point which would be in principle objectionable to the
Left. It is the programme of an as yet amorphous movement in
transition. If it can consolidate its initial success and rid itself
of its chauvinistic bombast, it may gradually rally around itself
the bulk of the atomized non-Socialist half of the country, and

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ISRAEL 309

develop into the liberal reform Party of the middle classes.
Mapai in the Centre, U.W.P. on the Left and the Freedom Party
on the Right could thus lead within a few years to a healthy three-
party system and replace the present chaos of some twenty political
Parties bickering forthemeagre crumbs of power in the tiny country.

The Stern Group has, since the proclamation of the State,
gone, or rather drifted, in a different direction. Its rank and file,
much less numerous than Irgun's, had been indoctrinated with
the maxims of total terror, without the restrictions imposed by -
the latter. They are a fanatic brand of young men without any
constructive ideas, politically illiterate, who could only have been
rehabilitated to the conditions of normal life through the joint
efforts of the Government and their own leaders. Neither of the
two proved capable of this. The new-baked Government, as so
often happens, were more concerned with settling old scores and
asserting their authority by draconic measures than with long-
term preoccupations of national unity ; their problem was not
how to reintegrate the former terrorist groups, but how to liquidate
them on the first suitable occasion. The leaders of Irgun avoided
traps and provocations with considerable restraint ; the leaders
of the Stern Group lacked both the restraint and the will to carry
their activities into the full daylight of democratic politics. With-
out any political programme of their own they sought to exploit
the tide of the popular mood, and at the same time to give vent
to their hatred of Britain by adopting an extreme pro-Russian
attitude. There is nothing new in this either ; the ultra-chauvin-
istic Croatian Ustachi and German Freikorps after both World
Wars have gone the same way.

Apart from the insignificant Communist Party, the Stern
Group thus became the only channel through which Soviet in-
fluence could infiltrate into the Israeli scene. This should not be
interpreted as meaning that any of the official leaders of the group
took orders from the Russians. But there is some circumstantial
evidence for the assumption that the Silent Soviet Services have
succeeded in creating a caucus within the group which, unknown
to its leaders, acted as a probably unconscious tool of the former.

At the elections on January 25, 1949, the group received 1-2 per
cent of the votes. Its future prospects are no better, and there is
little doubt that it will continue for a while as an insignificant sect
and vanish with increasing political stability in the new State.

310 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

VI, The Liberals and Clericals

The remaining Parties of the Government coalition can be
treated briefly. The so-called " General Zionists" and the
" Progressive Party ", a break-away group of the former, corre-
spond to the liberal Parties in Europe and are sharing their
fate by gradually vanishing from the political scene. Together
the two Parties polled 9-2 per cent of the votes.

The " Religious Bloc " is a force composed of not less than
five different religious Parties, including the " Partyless Orthodox
Women's Party ". It has assembled 12 per cent of the total vote,
but the influence of its somewhat machiavellian rabbis is 'con-
siderably stronger than these figures indicate. The Orthodox in
Israel in fact form a religious pressure-group which will trade its
support for the Government in exchange for such concessions as
the interdiction of public transport on the Shabbath, or for higher
subventions for the rabbinical schools, and thus introduces an
element of sacred corruption into the political life of the young
country. The problem of the relations of Church and State,
which is one of the characteristic issues in Israel, will be discussed
in a later chapter.

II

THE REBIRTH OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE

THEODORE HERZL, the founder of modern Zionism, suffered
from the blind spots which mar the vision of the single-minded
genius in matters outside the sharp beam of his endeavour. When
he was asked what language the Jews, forgathered from the four
corners of the earth, would speak in their own State, he said
naively that each Jew would of course speak his own language,
and somehow they would manage to get along. The idea that
they should revert to ancient Hebrew seemed to him absurd :
" Why, who of us knows enough Hebrew to ask even for a railway
ticket ? "

Yet obviously a unitary State required a single language. In
other pioneer countries with a heterogeneous population the
strongest ethnic group of immigrants has imposed its language
on the others. According to this rule, the language of Palestine
should have become Yiddish, the lingua franca of the Eastern
Jewish masses. But Yiddish is a strange vernacular, a mixture
of mediaeval German, rabbinical Hebrew and half a dozen modern
languages, without a fixed grammar, syntax or vocabulary. It is
a typical product of exile, which mirrors the physical and cultural
homelessness of the wandering Jew. The Zionist masses felt that
if they were to be re-formed into a nation this refugee jargon would
not do ; that the return to their original home entailed the return
to their original language, biblical Hebrew. If the clock of history
was to be turned back, it had to be done whole-heartedly. Like
Zionism itself, the Hebraistic movement was a blend of mystic
and utilitarian motives. A common language of the immigrants
was a practical necessity ; the choice of 'Hebrew followed as an
act of mystical logic or logical mysticism.

The movement was started in Palestine in the i88os by a
fanatical little school teacher named Eliezer ben Yehuda ; by the
end of the First World War it had triumphed. Hebrew became,
together with Arabic and English, the third official language of
Palestine under the British Mandate, and in 1948 the sole official
language of Israel. The older generation, if they are recent
immigrants, speak Hebrew in public, and German or Polish of

3"

312 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

Sephardic at home ; but the native generation, regardless of their
parents* country of origin, are brought up in Hebrew schools and
speak no other language, except some Berlitz-English which is
taught in secondary schools. Biblical Hebrew is the language of
Government and Parliament, of schools and courts, of Press and
radio, of taxi-drivers and poets. And that means that the cultural
life of the country is confined to a medium which has been
practically dead for two thousand years.

In previous chapters I have attempted to show how, in the
political field, the Jews in Israel are struggling to reconquer the
forgotten art of being a nation, to fill in the long gap in their social
development. In the cultural field this gap makes itself felt even
more. For Hebrew as a spoken language had ceased to develop
long before the beginnings of the Christian era. In the time of
Jesus the Jews in Palestine spoke Aramaic, and only the learned
discoursed in so-called " Rabbinical Hebrew ", a kind of equi-
valent of Church Latin. After the completion of the Talmud
(circa A.D. 500) not even the scholars wrote in Hebrew any longer ;
the language had become too fossilized to be of any use to mediaeval
thought and philosophy. The Jewish scholars of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries Moses ben Maimon, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol
wrote in Arabic, as their descendants wrote in German, English
and French. Probably the last literary works of any merit written
in the ancient language are the poems of Juda Halevy (c. 1085-
c. 1140); but Halevy, too, wrote his philosophical works in
Arabic, as Hebrew had become totally unsuitable for the treat-
ment of abstract subjects and for a precise expression of thought.

Thus the unfortunate Hebrew translator of to-day is faced
with the herculean task of rendering Kant and Marx, Freud and
Bergson, Whitehead and Ogden in an idiom which even twelfth-
century scholars abandoned as obsolete and unfit for their purpose.
This is not merely a matter of vocabulary ; modern scientific
terms can be borrowed from European languages, and this, of
course, is constantly done ; the difficulty lies in the archaic struc-
ture of the language. Metaphorically speaking, the task amounts
to the transformation of a Phoenician chariot, by fitting it out with
borrowed spare parts, into a racing motor-car.

Fiction and belles-lettres face an even graver handicap. The
small and archaic vocabulary of the Hebrew language, its paucity
of adverbs and adjectives, are the consequence of arrested develop-
ment and make for an inflexibility of style which causes transla-

THE REBIRTH OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 313

tions of Hemingway to be practically indistinguishable from
translations of Proust, and Malraux to read like Walter Scott.
The modern Hebrew novelist or poet has no linguistic roots in
the classics, for there are no Hebrew classics since the Bible, no
literary traditions, no idiomatic developments. The instrument
on which he has to express the nuances of his twentieth-century
emotions and psychology has no half-tones or modulations of
key and timbre. It is admirably suited for producing prophetic
thunder ; but you cannot play a scherzo on a ram's-horn. More
precisely, the modern Hebrew writer's predicament may be com-
pared to the imaginary case of a contemporary English author
condemned to express himself in the language of Beowulf.

The fact that Hebrew through all these centuries, though
dead as a mundane language, remained in use for prayer and
biblical exegesis, has increased rather than diminished the
handicap of its adaptation to modern use. Church Latin is the
dead branch on a living tree which produced the main idioms of
Western civilization ; ' on the Hebrew stem only the dead branch
was preserved. This is now being artificially revived by the
grafting of new shoots ; but the mentality of sterile scholasticism
and turgid mysticism clings to the language and is only slowly
being exorcised. Thus the attempted renaissance of Hebrew
culture labours under a twofold difficulty : the archaic texture of
the language and its rabbinical aura.

This may explain why modern Hebrew drama and fiction
have so far failed to come to grips with the problems of contem-
porary life. The repertories of the famous Habima, and even of
the workers' theatre " Ohel ", are mainly devoted to the past
to plays based either on biblical subjects or on the life of the
Polish ghettoes. There are, of course, notable exceptions, like
Shamir's excellent play about collective settlements, recently pro-
duced by the experimental Chamber Theatre, 1 or Maltze's novel
Maagalot on the same subject. But though Israel is a pioneer
country bursting with vitality and obsessed with its topical
problems, by and large modern Hebrew literature is singularly
lacking in modernity and " Zeitgeist ". Its general keynote is a
somewhat stale romanticism, a sentimental tendency to linger on
the sufferings of the past, tinged with the ironical self-pity tradi-
tional in Yiddish literature. On Hebrew poetry I do not feel
qualified to express an opinion.

1 See pp. 260-61.

314 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

A further major obstacle on the path towards a renaissance of
Hebrew culture is the Hebrew alphabet, which consists of con-
sonants only, to the exclusion of vowels. A system of vowels
written underneath the row of consonants was devised in the
sixth and seventh centuries A.D., but is practically never used
either in handwriting or in print. This two-storey alphabet is,
in fact, impracticable, as it would require linotype machines with
about a dozen different keys for each consonant according to the
vowel by which it is followed, and which has to appear underneath
it. The result is that the pronunciation and meaning of a written
word can only be determined after the reader has guessed the
approximate meaning of the whole phrase a fascinating field
of study for the Gestalt psychologist. Thus, for example, the
word composed of the three printed signs Daleth, Vav, Daleth will
mean either " the beloved one " or " uncle " or " boiler " or
" David ", according to the context in which it appears.

Written Hebrew not only lacks that unequivocal precision
which alone makes the expression of complicated thought possible,
it also paralyses the creative writer, prevents him from playing
and experimenting with words, prevents innovation and linguistic
development.

For, since the meaning of the written word has to be deduced
by the reader from the context, unorthodox turns of phrase are
simply not understood. It need not be emphasized how much
such a system, whose difficulties rank somewhere half-way between
those of the Latin and Chinese scripts, impedes the learning of
the language, both for the child and the foreigner. I have spent
on and off altogether some four years in Palestine and speak
Hebrew fairly fluently, but am still incapable of reading a news-
paper, to say nothing of books. The majority of new immigrants
are in the same position ; they are prevented from fully partici-
pating in the cultural life of the country, and are condemned to
intellectual sterility. A number of German- Jewish writers of
European fame have shared this sad fate ; an even greater number
of leading scholars and scientists abroad are prevented by the
same reason from lecturing at the Hebrew University. And as
the future development of this small and isolated community
depends on a steady flow of immigration from, and cultural inter-
change with, the Western world, the gravity of the problem should
not be underestimated.

The only way to avoid the dangers of cultural isolation and

THE REBIRTH OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 315

stagnation seems to be the latinization of the obsolete and cumber-
some alphabet. If this revolutionary measure could be carried
out in backward Turkey, one would have expected it to meet
with little resistance in this predominantly European community.
But though latinization was proposed some twenty-five years
ago by Jabotinsky, and advocated by the son of Ben Yehuda, who
published for a short time a Hebrew newspaper printed in Latin
characters, the resistance of the traditionalists was too strong, and
the experiment failed.

As has already been mentioned, this cultural conservatism is
not confined to the clerical Party but is shared by the Socialist
Left. Their rejection of latinization is symbolic : though
rationalized by arguments about technical difficulties, its real
source is a deeply ingrained, instinctive resistance against the
final breakdown of the cultural barriers between Jew and Gentile.
Such vestiges of cultural isolationism can be found in many walks
of life here ; they are signs that the harsh daylight of Israel has
not yet completely effaced the shadows of the ghetto, whose walls
not only segregated from, but also offered protection against, a
hostile environment.

For the ghetto was both prison and nest, where generations of
Jews, huddled together in the warm twilight of the Shabbath-
candles, developed that peculiar feature of Jewish communities
which one might be tempted to name " claustrophilia ". It is an
awful word ; but it comes nearer to the psychological reality of
Israel than terms like " chauvinism " or " isolationism ". Its
dangers to the cultural future of the young State should not be
ignored.

Ill

BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE?

THESE lines are written on the i5th of Tamuz of the year 5708
since the creation of the world. I have just checked it by looking
at the date-line of the morning paper. Day after day the news-
papers in Israel appear under similar date-lines, and the corre-
sponding date according to the Christian calendar is only indicated
in coy brackets. Even the Socialist and Communist dailies follow
the same custom. At the same time, of course, the whole country,
with the exception of a few religious cranks, lives according to the
Gregorian calendar. Why, then, do the newspapers pretend to
count time from the day when God divided the Heavens from
the Earth ?

This paradox typifies one of the more startling phenomena in
Israeli life. While the orthodox religious element represents only
a small minority of the population 12-03 per cent to be exact,
according to the last election results and while the Socialist
Parties, with their materialist and anti-clerical doctrine, occupy
all political and economic key positions, life in Israel is neverthe-
less under the sway of clericalism to a degree unequalled in any
other country of our contemporary world.

In my collection of curiosities there is a recent menu card of
one of Tel Aviv's leading hotels, written in English and Hebrew,
which reads :

SPECIAL DINNER
Chopped Chicken Liver

Consomm
Roast Pork (for U.N.O. and the Press)

or

Roast Turkey

Potatoes, Vegetables, Salad

Ice Cream

Thus U.N.O. and the foreign Press may indulge in roast pork,
but not the citizen of Israel, as pork is forbidden by Mosaic Law.
That doesn't mean that eating pork is strictly speaking illegal,

316

BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE? 317

for as yet the State of Israel has no Constitution and no definite
Code of Laws. It only means that the proprietor of the hotel in
question does not wish to risk a row with the Rabbinate. And
the Socialist-dominated Government are adopting exactly the
same attitude. They not only abstain from importing pork,
ham or bacon (except in small quantities, for U.N.O. and the
Press), but only permit the importation of kosher meat that
is of meat slaughtered according to Mosaic ritual under the
supervision of the Chief Rabbi in the country of origin. And as
kosher meat is both expensive and difficult to obtain on the
world market, there has been, since the end of the British Mandate,
practically no meat in Israel. 1

Kosherness, however, is only one of the relatively minor
rabbinical plagues in the young State. A major one is the pro-
hibition of all public traffic from sunset on Friday to the end of
the Shabbath. This means that the citizen of Tel Aviv, Haifa
or Jerusalem is unable, on his only free day in the week, to take
a bus-ride to the sea, visit friends, or go for an excursion in the
country. Taxis and private cars, however, may, for the time being,
circulate ; which means, as is the case with all retrograde legisla-
tion, that the masses are victimized while the rich can comfortably
circumvent the law.

Israel's University, on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, has been
in existence for over twenty years, but only recently have plans
been announced for a medical faculty. The reason has been mainly
because dissecting corpses is contrary to Mosaic Law, and the Board
of the University has been understandably hesitant. Instances of
the orthodox stranglehold on this young and exuberant country can

1 On January 20, 1949, the following news item was issued by Palcar, the
official information bulletin of the Israeli Government :

" The crisis in the Cabinet caused by the question of the type of meat to
be imported has now come to an end. As will be remembered, the three
members of the Cabinet who belong to the religious parties Mr. Moshe
Shapiro, Minister of Immigration, Rabbi J. M. Levin, Minister of Social
Welfare, and Rabbi J. L. Fishman, Minister for Religion and War Victims
had, during three months, abstained from the deliberations of the Cabinet
because of their disagreement with the Government's views on this question.
By a majority of 6 votes to 3 the Cabinet has now adopted the suggestion of
the religious bloc according to which the importation of meat will in future
be jointly controlled by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the
Ministry for Religion."

In plain words, the Cabinet has capitulated to the rabbis and no non-kosher
meat will be imported into Israel.

318 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

be multiplied, from the grave danger that marriage, divorce and
inheritance may temporarily fall under the exclusive and mediaeval
jurisdiction of rabbinical courts, to such grotesque incidents as
the Orthodox Party's solemn request that each Israeli Legation
abroad should have a " religious attache " on its staff or that
men and women should be forced to bathe from separate beaches.
There is even a Talmudic seminary in Jerusalem where the rites
of animal sacrifice are studied in great earnest and secrecy, in the
hope that Solomon's Temple will soon be rebuilt on its ancient
site. If the Orthodox Party had its way, the State of Israel would
regress to the conditions of life before the fall of Jerusalem in
the first century A.D.

To the outside observer all this may appear romantic and
picturesque, but from the point of jview of the new State cleri-
calism _js ^one^ of the most seTipi^pjrplijems to be solved. Two
mam questions arise : firstly, how was iF^ossrBleTof"^tBe* old
rabbis to get such sTbohHrn this modern pioneer country ; and
secondly, the outlook for the future.

The answer to the first question is partly political, partly
psychological. The Labour Party, Mapai, commands roughly
one-third of the total votes, and can only rule by coalition. It
can form a coalition with the United Workers' Party on the
extreme Left, whom it dislikes, or with the Freedom Party and
other Right- Wing groups, whom it dislikes even more. The only
remaining solution is to form a majority with the splinter groups
of the Centre ; and among these the most important are the
Orthodox Party and the Orthodox Workers' Party the latter
being clerically-minded but socially progressive, like many of the
Christian Trade Unions of Europe. Hence, according to the laws
of parliamentary arithmetic, if Mapai wants to rule independently
of the extreme Right and Left, it has to make concessions to the
clergy. For a number of years the Labour Party has lived, at
Zionist Congresses, in the Municipal Councils and other autono-
mous bodies, under the holy terror of the rabbis. Now, as the
dominant Party in the State, it is faced with the same problem in
a more acute form.

This situation has some analogy with that of the French
Third Force coalition. But in France the division of Church and
State is the firmly established result of a long historical develop-
ment, and the M.R.P. would never dream of asking its Socialist
partners to abolish, say, civil marriage. In Israel, on the other

BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE? 319

hand, this division has never been carried out, for the simple
reason that there was no State, and that the survival of the Jews
as a separate entity was solely and exclusively due to their religious
allegiance. In the segregated Jewish communities behind the
ghetto walls, the rabbis were priests and judges, spiritual and
secular authority all in one. Hence the deeply ingrained and
mostly unconscious reluctance of the Jews in Israel to defy
openly the power of the rabbis, or even to engage in a clean fight
for the liberalization of religious observance, however fossilized
its rites have become. Whoever has watched, for instance, a
ritual slaughter must be appalled by the preservation of this
archaic and cruel procedure ; yet there is hardly a voice in Israel
raised against it. The following excerpt from my diary may
illustrate the mentality of the Orthodox leaders, and what would
become of Israel if it failed to break their stranglehold.

Tel Aviv, October 7

To-day went to see Rabbi Fishman, Minister for Religion
and member of the Cabinet.

The Ministry is a small two-storey house in the former
Templar colony at Sarona, now transformed into a Government
compound. It is teeming with little bearded men in skull-caps
huddled behind deal tables, and more bearded men in black silk
kaftans waiting in the corridors. Rabbi Fishman is seventy-two,
has a white moustache and goatee and a pleasant twinkle in his
eye which becomes less pleasant whenever the mildest heresy is
uttered. We started the conversation in Hebrew, but as I was
unable to understand his synagogal ashkenazi pronunciation with
the strong yiddish lilt, a secretary was called in to translate. This
secretary, a young man with skull-cap and side-locks, lapped up
the Rabbi's words like honey, underlined the Rabbi's arguments
with a gentle swaying of his head, smacking his lips like a con-
noisseur of rare wines, and accompanied their translation with
rhythmic gestures of his hands. (He reminded me of the old
Jewish story of the young man telling his friend of his splendid
new job : " I have become a Tsetserer to our Rabbi ". " And
what has a Tsetserer to do ? " " The Tsetserer has to sit at the
Rabbi's feet, and when the Rabbi performs a miracle he goes
Ts ts ts ! ' ")

My first question was : What does the Rabbi think of the
various movements to reform and liberalize religious observance ?

320 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

ffl

The Rabbi answered : Israel will live according to the Law as
laid down by Moses, which needs not the slightest reform. I
asked : What about the Shabbath prohibition of traffic ? Surely
this is not based on the Law of Moses, but on a late mediaeval
codification (the Shulkhan Arukh, written by a man called
Joseph Caro) ? The Rabbi said : No, it is already in the Bible,
in the Book of Nehemiah, where it says, " On the Shabbath
neither king nor servant shall carry a weight ". He leaned back
comfortably, and expounded : " Now what does it mean; ' the
king shall not carry a weight ' ? What weight would a king
carry ? A handkerchief maybe, or a golden ring. So what does
the prohibition really mean ? It means that on the Shabbath the
king shouldn't ride out. Neither the king nor the servant, neither
on a horse nor in a bus."

Triumphant smile of the Rabbi ; translator smacks his lips.
I said I couldn't follow his interpretation, and had a different one :
"Thou shalt carry no weight" means you mustn't make an
effort. For instance a person may be very fat, and to carry his
own weight on a hot Shabbath day from Herzl Street to the beach
would mean a great effort for him, and the sweat on his brow
would be an unpleasant sight in the eyes of the Lord and a breach
of the Shabbath. That's why we need buses on the Shabbath.

The secretary translated this with a treacherously appreciative
" Ts ts ", and now the Rabbi said something very revealing. The
logical retort would of course have been : " And what about the
bus-driver's Shabbath ? " Instead of which he said : " You see,
if we had in Tel Aviv a system of electric trams it would perhaps
be all right. But a motor car needs igniting. And to make fire
on the Shabbath is not permitted."

The explanation of this absurdity is to be found in the curiously
twisted, labyrinthine logic of the Orthodox Jew. He cares little
about the bus-driver, for it was a habit among the Orthodox in
Eastern Europe to employ a " Shabbath goy " a gentile paid
to carry out on the Shabbath the menial tasks which are forbidden
to the true believer. One of the Shabbath goy's tasks was to light
the candles or oil lamps, for the making of fire on the Shabbath
was regarded as a major sin. But the matter did not end there.
For the Bible says that the servant who is a stranger in Israel's
tents should obey the same law as his masters. Hence the
Orthodox could not explicitly order the Shabbath goy or the
gentile housemaid to break the law. He had to arrange matters

BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE? 321

by expressing his wishes indirectly within earshot of the servant,
say by sighing non-committally : " Now wouldn't it be nice if we
had the light on ! " It was an echo of this long-standing tradition
which made the Rabbi come out with the theory that the Lord
makes a sharp distinction between Shabbath traffic by electric
trams and by internal-combustion engines.

I asked : What about electric switches ? He must have ex-
pected the question, for he explained at once that he has an electric
clock-device installed in his house which switches the light auto-
matically on at the proper hour on Friday evening, switches it off
at midnight, and on again on the Shabbath evening. I compli-
mented him on his ingenuity, but the secretary said with a smile,
pitying my ignorance, that he too, and every Orthodox household,
had a smilar contraption installed. I found out later that all
synagogues, most schools and a number of apartment houses in
Israel have been using this automatic clock-switch for years.

To complete his victory, the Rabbi pulled out the Book of
Nehemiah from his shelf and showed me the passage about
carrying weights (xiii, 17-19).

More about the Shabbath. Not only is the use of any vehicle
prohibited, but even visiting friends on foot is a ticklish question,
for the Bible says " Al yi'tseh mi maqomeh'kha " Thou shalt
not leave thy place on the Shabbath. This, the Minister explained,
means that nobody is allowed to walk further than a mile and a
quarter from his house. Why just a mile and a quarter ? Because
in ancient Israel the " place " of a family within the tribe em-
braced a space of about a mile and a quarter in radius. In some
Orthodox settlements there are actually wire fences put up,
marking the limit of a Shabbath walk. However, Tel Aviv has
a suburb, B'ne Barak, mainly inhabited by Orthodox believers,
who, the Rabbi explained, like a Shabbath stroll on the beach.
A satisfactory way to make this possible was found by the following
arrangement. The burghers of B'ne Barak walk in the direction
of the beach, carrying a plate of food. This they put down on the
ground when they reach the mile and a quarter limit. The spot
on which the food is put down is considered to have become
their new " place ", and they can proceed for a further mile and
a quarter ; and so on.

"You see," concluded the Minister, "that we need no
tikunim no reforms. All these devices by which we adapt the
Mosaic Law to our modern days are merely tikunot interpreta-

Y

322 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

tions. Tikunim are forbidden, but tikunot are permitted and are
a proof of scholarly learning and ingenuity."

His way of referring to past events was to say : " Seven
hundred and fifty years ago ", or " Three hundred years ago ", to
avoid having to say " At the end of the twelfth century ", or " In
the seventeenth century ", which would imply acceptance of the
Christian calendar. As counting from the creation of the world
would involve too much cumbersome arithmetic, they count
backwards which about sums up the way their minds work.
To my question whether he would agree that the teaching of
secular history in the schools was desirable, the Rabbi answered :
" I have never studied history, but I am told by experts that I
am an expert in history ". At which I thought it was about time
to take my leave. The experience would have been merely
amusing as a journey to Wonderland ; but as it happened it was
an interview with a Minister in the Government. It was a journey
to Wonderland nevertheless, into the petrified forests of a ghetto
religion which for many centuries has ceased to be a living system
of worship. Long generations of rabbis and scholars had devoted
their lives to the sterile brain-acrobatics of mediaeval scholasti-
cism, to commenting on each other's commentaries, to pondering
on the hidden meaning of words (as each Hebrew letter stands also
for a figure, each word has a number-value which lends itself to
endless numerological games) ; and above all to devious tikunot
or interpretations of the law. Through these " interpretations "
one generation after another learned the art of cheating the Lord
and their own consciences. They were a technique which became
a conditioned mental reflex, so that the first approach to a law or
prohibition was how to " interpret " it, n^ver taking no for an
answer. How far this mental corruption in matters divine was
the product of social pressure which forced the Jew to live on
the margin of the law, and how far the Talmudistic mentality
reacted on his pattern of social behaviour, is a moot point. The
outcome at any rate was a vicious circle, a perpetuum mobile for
generating anti-semitism, which linked persecution and evasion
in a monotonously alternating tidal rhythm.

One of the main raisons f&re of Israel is to break this vicious
cycle. Already the Orthodox are in a minority, and the native
generation, grown up under hard pioneering conditions, show
signs of developing a mentality which conforms to the advice

BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE? 323

given to their ancestors by one who wished them well : to answer
Yea or Nay, for whatsoever is more cometh of evil But the
ghetto is putting up a tenacious rearguard action. And behind
the political arguments for appeasing the rabbis, there lurks, as
we saw, a deeper psychological reason for the uneasy acquiescence,
even of the extreme Left, to the holy blackmail exerted by the
Orthodox Parties. For almost twenty centuries Israel had no
political and social history, and was cemented together solely by
religious tradition. If this tradition goes, if Mosaic Law is recog-
nized as an anachronism, what spiritual foundations will remain ?
For unlike other nations, Israel has no Cromwell and no Joan of
Arc, no Voltaire, Goethe or Lincoln ; its heroes are the Prophets,
its only classic the Bible. Once again we find that a paradox in
present-day Israel a Socialist country under clerical sway is
explained by the gap in its past history.

We have also seen, however, in previous chapters, how quickly
this vacuum is being filled in the political field, how centuries of
European evolution are telescoped into a few years under the
tropical conditions of Israel's mental climate. Hence the next
developments in the relations between State and Church are
relatively easy to foresee. During the first few years of the internal
consolidation of the new State, while the Parties are manoeuvring
for power, the Orthodox will retain their political key-position
and benefit from the rivalry of the others. In all likelihood the
first Constitution will place marriage, divorce and other matters
of personal status under the exclusive jurisdiction of religious
courts. This will mean, among other things, that there will be
no civil marriages in Israel ; that women will be unable to obtain
divorce ; that there will be no travel on the Shabbath ; that
restaurants will not serve cheese after meat, this being also against
Mosaic Law ; and that generally speaking Israel will be a very
picturesque country for romantically-minded travellers, but from
this particular point of view a rather tiresome country to live in.

This state of affairs, one can confidently predict, will last
some five or, at most, ten years. Then the young native genera-
tion, which has no memory of ghettoes and is developing a
national tradition of its own, will carry out a vociferous but
bloodless* secular revolution and achieve a clean division between
Church and State.

IV

THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE
A SUMMING-UP

AN English foreign correspondent, 1 who had spent two months
in Tel Aviv, said with a sigh : " When I arrived here I was
pro- Jewish and anti-Zionist. Now I am becoming pro-Zionist
and anti- Jewish."

This is a fairly precise summing-up of an experience which
a great number of well-meaning strangers undergo in Israel
newspaper men, diplomatic staff, U.N.O. personnel. They
become converted to Zionism not by arguments but by the hard
facts of Zionist pioneer achievement. The modern villages in
the desert, the drained marshes and reclaimed dunes, the schools,
hospitals, factories and social services, the bustling bee-hive
activity of the whole country, the tough and healthy native
generation born of soft and sickly parents all this makes an
irresistible impact on any open-minded observer from abroad.
He is forced to admire what he sees and almost as forcibly
tempted to dislike it. The older the civilization of his native
country, the stronger the temptation to dislike, and the more
guilty he feels when aesthetic revulsion gains the upper hand over
his objective judgment.

For to the aesthete this pioneer country has as yet nothing to
offer* Life in Israel is lacking in tradition and style, form and
colour, humour and grace. Tel Aviv's architecture is the drab
functionalism of the early 'twenties at its worst. The streets have
no skyline; the cheap, peeling stucco on the concrete blocks makes
the whole town look as if it had the measles ; the sea-front is
hemmed in by a row of sordid little cafes with blaring loudspeakers.
The Army has as yet no uniforms, but the dominant colour in the
streets is khaki, even in peace-time : workers, clerks, bus-drivers,
schoolboys, flapper-girls and servants of the State mostly wear

1 Michael Davidson of The Observer, whose feature articles were among
the best written on the early days of Israel.

324

THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE 325

khaki shorts and shirts. This imparts to the dreadfully over-
crowded streets the powerful but shapeless dynamism of a muddy
stream. The cinemas, restaurants and cafes offer no privacy and
relaxation ; they are swirling eddies in the stream, which suck
you in and spit you out an hour later, feeling even more limp and
sweaty than before. The boiling air is saturated with the noise
of radios, cafe orchestras and children yelling from the street up
to their mammas on the second floor. But all this pandemonium
lacks the local colour, and hence the specific charm, of an oriental
bazaar or an old Italian port. It is the colourless, shapeless bustle
of Jewish suburbs all over the world, of Whitechapel or Nalewki,
Orchard Street or the Faubourg du Temple. The stranger, after
a fortnight or so in Tel Aviv, begins to feel like a fresh-water fish
thrown into a salt-water pond ; he gasps for air and develops
acute symptoms of claustrophobia.

Aesthetically, Tel Aviv is the worst feature of Israel, the
architect's Sodom and Gomorrah. But the new Jewish residential
quarters in Haifa or Tiberias are much in the same style. As for
the countryside^ no greater contrast is imaginable than that be-
tween the picturesque squalor of the Arab villages, now mostly
dead and deserted, and the sober purposefulness of the Jewish
settlements. These pioneer villages do not fit the landscape, the
houses do not fit the climate, rural life is devoid of folklore and
tradition. The oldest villages, like Petakh Tikwa or Rekhowoth,
founded at the turn of the century, look like Ukrainian or Polish
townlets transplanted to the Judean plain ; others, like Naharia,
are German Kurorts grafted on by plastic landscape surgery,
complete with Biergarten and Familien Pension. The tourist,
who came to admire, feels at the same time both moved and
repelled. Aiid this is not a matter of aesthetic snobbery, but of
a kind of vitamin-starvation of the senses.

This absence of a native tradition, of an organically grown
pattern of life, makes itself felt in every sphere. The Orthodox
Jews who used to spend their days in prayer at the Wailing Wall
are the most traditionalist element in Israel ; yet they strut in the
scorching heat wearing fur caps, waistcoats, caftans and knee-boots,
apparently believing that this seventeenth-century Polish costume,
the uniform of the ghetto, was worn by the Hebrew tribes in the
desert. The national dance of the Hebrew youth is the Ukrainian
Horra ; the national anthem of Israel is a melody by the Czech
composer Smetana ; the popular song of the day, the " Negeb "

326 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

is the song of the Russian partisans fitted with Hebrew words.
The food is Viennese or Polish, rich and heavy, as unsuitable for
the climate as are the fur caps of the devout. There are no native
arts and no native crafts (except that of the Yemenite silversmiths
imported by Jews from Aden, and now rapidly becoming com-
mercialized) ; painting and sculpture are unoriginal and eclectic.

By and large, the Jews in Palestine have remained untouched
by the native mode of life ; they have not learnt from the Arabs
how to build houses that are cool, spacious and cheap, nor to
make succulent kebab on a charcoal fire. They have imposed
upon the country their own immigrants' pattern ; but unlike other
pioneers, who had roots in the national traditions of their mother
country out of which the branch of their colonial civilization
developed, the Jewish colonists had no particular mother country
and no specific cultural roots of their own. They came from the
Diaspora, from the ghettoes and suburbs and D,P. camps of the
world, and brought with them bits of alien civilizations picked
up in transit. That is perhaps why life in Israel's capital has such
a shapeless, nondescript quality about it, and why Tel Aviv
gives the impression of being the large Jewish suburb of a non-
existent city.

This suburban character of cultural life is further accentuated
by the absence of distinct social classes. Israel has no aristocracy,
no gentry, no patrician bourgeoisie, no real proletariat. Its
population has a uniform social background : that of the petite
bourgeoisie, the lower middle classes of Eastern European Jewish
small towns. There are of course rich and poor, but in
their tradition and culture they^all belong to the same social
stratum. The greengrocer's wife and the Cabinet Minister's wife
speak with the same accent, use the same vocabulary, share the
same tastes, values and outlook on life.

Most of these remarks apply equally to any other young and
raw pioneer country. Life in the Middle West is hardly more
inspiring in its cultural aspect than life in Tel Aviv. And the
visitor to New Zealand does not expect to find there the atmo-
sphere of Florence. Nothing could be more unfair than to judge
this country of pioneers and refugees by the standards of inellower
civilizations. Years spent in concentration camps or in draining
the Hule marshes are no equivalent for an English public school
education. All this is so obvious that it would hardly need
stressing if any other country were concerned ; but in the peculiar

THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE 327

case of Jewish Palestine, expectations are quite out of keeping
with reality, and here cultural factors play a sometimes decisive
part in shaping political destiny.

This, indeed, is the core of the problem of Israel's relations
with the outside world. The tourist who embarks for New
Zealand or the American Middle West knows more or less what to
expect and risks no shock of disappointment. But the stranger
to Israel, whether diplomat or journalist, has, partly through the
fault of an over-zealous Zionist propaganda, a completely wrong
picture in his mind. He expects something in the vein of pictur-
esque Maccabeans fighting under palm trees in a kind of Max
Reinhardt production, while prospective Freuds and Einsteins
play chess in the cafe round the corner. The fact is that there are
few palm trees in Israel, for eucalyptus and citrus plants pay
quicker and better returns ; that the scenery is more Polish than
oriental ; that it is both a hard pioneer country and a bitter refugee
country, disillusioned by experience, stubbornly fighting for life,
with an aching void in its past and an interrogation mark for its
future. The muses and the social graces are still under embargo ;
most of the things which make life attractive and worth living are
for to-morrow.

2

Each war or revolution produces its lost generation. Israel's
lost generation are the middle-aged, those who came here at a
time of their life which still allows them to remember Europe.
Not the fleshpots of Europe : for most of them lived in penury.
Not the safety of Europe : for they were persecuted. They do
not plan or even yearn to go back, for their bridges have been
burnt either by their own free will, or by the torches of their
persecutors. . They know that for them, as for the whole nation,
there is no turning back. The very word " homesickness " is
blasphemy, for their home is here, and they have denied Europe
as Europe denied them.

Nevertheless they are a lost generation. They finger lovingly
their Israeli passports, but they cannot get accustomed to the
climate. They are proud of living in Israel's capital, but its pro-
vincial atmosphere oppresses them. They Hebraise their names,
Steinberg into Har-Even, Wolfson into Ben-Dov, but Hebrew
remains an acquired language to them. The children in school
take to the biblical language like ducks to the pond, but the parents
speak it haltingly and read it with even greater difficulty ; after

328 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

years of effort they manage to get through a newspaper, but
Hebrew books are beyond their ken and they feel left out, con-
demned to intellectual sterility.

There also exists a lost generation in a different sense of the
word, though the two overlap to some extent. They are the
people who have spent years sometimes as many as ten in
concentration and D.P. camps, and who only survived by be-
coming conditioned to circumventing the law for the law for
the Jew on the continent of Europe was deportation and death.
Few can sustain such pressure without some deformation of
character, and a large number of the immigrants of recent years
are psychological problem-cases, some of them with a marked
asocial tendency. This trend will of necessity continue until the
last D.P. camp is empty and the last survivors of the European
disaster are transferred.

The other main sources of immigration, present and future,
are the Sephardi Jews from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the Yemen and
North Africa, whose economic and physical existence is becoming
increasingly precarious. They are orientals both in character and
appearance ; their colour varies from olive to dark brown ; their
main language is Arabic. The socially most useful elements among
them are probably the Yemenites, from the southernmost tip of the
Arabian peninsula ; they are short, dark, wiry men who look and
speak like Arabs, are extremely devout, straight-thinking and
primitive. At the opposite end of the scale are the youngsters
from the slums of Cairo, Salonika and Beirut, with a Levantine
mentality, emotionally unstable, an easy prey both to the lures
of the black market and to terrorist romantics.

Already some 25 to 30 per cent of Israel's population are
oriental Jews ; and by virtue both of their higher birth-rate and
of the increasing pressure in the neighbouring countries, they
will, in all probability, outnumber the European element in the
not too distant future. This fact makes the cultural problem of
Israel appear in, a new light, which as yet few of the political and
intellectual leaders of ths country are prepared to face.

To summarize these overlapping trends : at the beginning of
modern Zionist colonization, the dominant element among the
immigrants were pioneers who came out of their own free will,
drawn by the twofold ideal of a national renaissance and a Socialist
Utopia. Since then, successive waves of persecution, starting in
Pilsudski's Poland and ending with the recent pogroms in Egypt,

THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE 329

have diminished the importance of the idealistic volunteer element
and proportionally increased the flood of refugees, both from
Europe and the Arab countries, who came out of sheer necessity,
without any idea or ideal in their heads. This process has led to
a considerable deterioration in the human material out of which
the new State is being built. Some of them are unwilling or
unable to assimilate themselves to the language and ways of the
country and are condemned to vegetate for the rest of their lives
in intellectual sterility; others have, through the tragic circum-
stances of their past, become socially deformed. In their ensemble,
these form the lost generation of Israel ; a transitory and amorphous
mass which as yet lacks the character of a nation. Only in the
native youth, born and reared in the country, does the first
intimation of the future profile of Israel begin to outline itself.

The Palestine-born young Jew's nickname, " sabra ", is
derived, as already mentioned, from the prickly, wild-growing,
somewhat tasteless fruit of the cactus plant. In physical appear-
ance he is almost invariably taller than his parents, robustly
built, mostly blond or brown-haired, frequently snub-nosed
and blue-eyed. The young male's most striking feature is that
he looks entirely un- Jewish; even his movements are angular
and abrupt, in contrast to the characteristic curvy roundedness
of Jewish gestures. The girls, on the other hand, seem as yet
to remain physically closer to the European Jewish type. They
are somewhat heavy in hip and bosom and mostly darker than
the boys. On the whole, there can be little doubt that the race
is undergoing some curious biological alteration, probably
induced by the abrupt change in climate, diet and the mineral
balance of the soil. It also seems that the female is slower in
undergoing this transformation, more inert or stable in con-
stitutional type. The whole phenomenon is a striking confirma-
tion of the theory that environment has a greater formative
influence than heredity, and that what we commonly regard as
Jewish characteristics are not racial features, but a product of
sustained social pressure and a specific way of life, a psycho-somatic
response to what Toynbee calls " the stimulus of penalizations ".

In his mental make-up the average young sabra is fearless to
the point of recklessness, bold, extroverted and little inclined
towards, if not openly contemptuous of, intellectual pursuits.
The children are particularly good-looking ; after puberty, how-

330 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

ever, their features and voices coarsen and seem never quite to
reach the balance of maturity. The typical sabra's face has
something unfinished about it ; the still undetermined character
of a race in transition. His diction is abrupt and unmodulated,
which sometimes gives the impression of rudeness. The relations
between young people of different sexes are of a comradely, back-
slapping kind ; romantic passion and erotic flirtation are both
absent. They mature late, marry early, and start a family at once.

The sabra's outlook on the world is rather provincial and
hyperchauvinistic. This could hardly be otherwise in a small and
exposed pioneer community which had to defend its physical
existence and build its State against almost impossible odds. One
cannot, it must be repeated, create a nation without nationalism ;
and only young fanatics could perform the near-miraculous feat
of defending isolated frontier settlements with small-arms and
home-made explosives against tanks. Thirty years of an un-
sympathetic British Administration, the oscillations of American
policy, the glaring impotence of the U.N. organization, have made
words like Western Civilization and Humanistic Values sound
rather like mockery in the young sabra's ears.

This, of course, is a transitory phenomenon. In a decade or
two, with Israel's position safely established in the Middle East,
the cessation of outward pressure will no doubt produce a corre-
sponding change in the mentality of the young generation. But
a change in what direction ? What kind of a civilization will
Israel's be ? Will it be a continuation of Western thought and
art and values ? Or the superficial veneer of Levantinism ? Or
will it go back to its ancient roots and develop out of them a
modern but specifically Hebrew culture ?

For the time being the leaders of Israel seem determined to
choose the third alternative. The whole educational system is
based on it. The Old Testament is taught in the schools not as
a religious subject, but as the main source of History, Literature*
Ethics and Philosophy, to the marked neglect of other sources of
human progress. In the average curriculum of secondary schools,
the senior classes are given, as we saw, eleven hours per week of
Bible and Hebrew classics, but only an hour and a half of history,
half of which time is again devoted to Jewish history. Among the
unavoidable teething troubles of Israel this egocentric tendency
in education is probably the most dangerous.

No doubt this " cultural claustrophilia " is also merely a passing

THE CULTURE OF THE NEW STATE 331

phase. It will vanish with increasing security and self-assurance.
What kind of civilization will take its place one cannot foretell,
but one thing seems fairly certain : within a generation or two
Israel will have become an entirely "un-Jewish" country. Already
the native generation shows a marked difference in physical ap-
pearance and general outlook from Jews in Europe or America,
and with each generation this contrast is bound to increase. The
possible repercussion of this process on the future of the Jewish
communities outside Israel will be discussed in the Epilogue.

EPILOGUE

IN the Proclamation of Independence of the new State, on
May 14, there is a paragraph which says ;

" Exiled from the Land of Israel, the Jewish people re-
mained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion,
never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restora-
tion of their national freedom."

It is the kind of phrase which has been so often said before
that one hardly realizes what momentous implications it carried
on that specific occasion for the seven or eight million Jews outside
Palestine. For it was the occasion on which their prayer had been
fulfilled ; and the logical consequence of the fulfilment of a prayer
is that one ceases to repeat it. But if prayers of this kind are no
longer repeated, if the mystic yearning for the return to Palestine
is eliminated from the Jewish faith, its very foundations and
essence will have gone.

Towards the end of the Passover meal which commemorates
the Exodus from Egypt, Jews all over the world lift their glasses
and exclaim : " To next year in Jerusalem ". For nearly twenty
centuries this was a moving ritual symbol. Now that no obstacles
bar any longer the fulfilment of the wish, the alternative before
the faithful is either to be next year in Jerusalem, or to cease
repeating a vow which has become mere lip-service.

In fact, the greater part of the formulae and vocabulary of
Jewish ritual has become meaningless since May 15, 1948. The
Proclamation of Independence affirms that " the State of Israel
will be open to Jews from all the countries of their dispersion ".
In future, Jews can no longer refer to themselves with the ritual
stock phrase of living in the Diaspora, or in Exile unless they
mean a self-imposed exile which has nothing to do with religion
or tradition.

The existence of the Hebrew State that is, a State whose
language and culture are Hebrew, not Yiddish, Polish or Ameri-
can puts every Jew outside Israel before a dilemma which will
become increasingly acute. It is the choice between becoming a

EPILOGUE 333

citizen of the Hebrew nation and renouncing any conscious or
implicit claim to separate nationhood.

This dilemma is not derived from abstract speculation, nor
from the claims of logical consistency ; it is imposed by hard
historical circumstances. Anti-Semitism is once more on the
increase. In his address to the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry, the aged leader of Zionism, Dr. Weizmann, summed up
a lifetime of experience :

" I am worried, but I don't see how I can stop it or what
can be done. [Anti-Semitism] is a sort of disease that spreads
apparently according to its own laws. I only hope that it will
never reach the terrible dimensions which it reached in Europe.
In fact, I somehow think that the Anglo-Saxon countries may
be immune from it. But that is a hope, a pious wish and
when I look at Canada, South Africa, even Great Britain, even
America, I sometimes lose my freedom from fear ... I be-
lieve the only fundamental cause of anti-Semitism it may
seem tautological is that the Jew exists. We seem to carry
anti-Semitism in our knapsacks wherever we go. . . ."

It is the twenty-first instalment of a twenty-century-old story.
To expect that it will come to a spontaneous end is to go against
historical and psychological evidence. It can only be brought to
an end by Jewry itself.

Before the prayer was fulfilled by the rebirth of Israel this
was difficult if not impossible. To renounce being a Jew meant
in most cases to deny solidarity with the persecuted, and seemed a
cowardly capitulation. Apart from pride, there was the conscious-
ness of an old heritage which one had no right to discard, of
a mission uncompleted, a promise unfulfilled. Jewry could not
vanish from the scene of history in an anti-climax.

Now the climax is reached, the circle closed. It is no longer
a question of capitulation, but of a free choice. The proclamation
of the Hebrew State is a signal to Jewry to pause on its long
journey, review its situation with sincerity towards itself, and
face facts which some time ago it was excusable and even honour-
able to shun.

The dilemma would not arise if being a Jew were merely a
matter of religion like being a Protestant, or merely a matter of
racial descent like being a French-Canadian. But both these com-
parisons are fallacious. The Jewish religion is not merely a system

334 PROMISE AND FULFILMENT

of faith and worship, but implies membership of a definite race
and potential nation. The greater part of the sacred texts is
national history. To be a good Catholic or Protestant it is enough
to accept certain doctrines and moral values which transcend
frontiers and nations ; to be a good Jew one must profess to belong
to a chosen race, which was promised Canaan, suffered various
exiles and will return one day to its true home. The " Englishman
of Jewish faith " is a contradiction in terms. His faith compels
him to regard himself as one with a different past and future from
the Gentile. He sets himself apart and invites being set apart.
His subjective conviction creates the objective fact that he is not
an English Jew, but a Jew living in England.

Nor is the condition of the American Jew comparable to that
of, say, the American of Irish descent. The latter's relation to
the " old country " is a cultural tie to a recent past of one or two
generations ago. The American Jew's " old country ", taken in
the same sense, is not the Jewish State, but Poland or Lithuania.
Whether his distant ancestors ever lived in Palestine, or rather
how many of them did, and how many were Romans, Crusaders,
Levantines, Slavs and Germans, is a moot point for the historian
and anthropologist. All one can say is that with the exception
of the " race-theorists " nearly all modern authorities hold that
Jewish characteristics are a product of sustained environmental
pressure, and not of racial heredity. An excellent summary of
the evidence can be found in Toynbee's Study of History ; and
a striking example in the native generation of Israel itself, which,
as we saw, is rapidly changing in appearance and character in an
entirely un- Jewish direction.

The conclusion is that since the foundation of the Hebrew
State the attitude of Jews who are unwilling to go there, yet
insist on remaining a community in some way apart from their
fellow-citizens, has become an untenable anachronism. This
attitude is as a rule defended by two types of argument. The first
is some explicit or implied theory of a separate Jewish race
which, apart from being historically untenable, the Jews are the
first to denounce when it is propounded by their enemies. The
second is religious tradition, with all its implied nationalism and
Chosen Race ideology. Like all acts of faith, this must be accepted
or rejected in toto. The true orthodox believer must draw the
consequences, now that the opportunity is offered to him, other-
wise his creed will become lip-service. But orthodox Jewry is a

EPILOGUE 335

vanishing minority. It is the well-meaning but confused majority
which, through inertia, perpetuates the anachronism by clinging
to a tradition in which it no longer really believes, to a mission
which is fulfilled, a pride which may become inverted cowardice.
Such honest sentimentalists should stop to think whether they
have the right to place the burden of the ominous knapsack, now
void of contents, on their children who have not asked for it.

To break the vicious circle of being persecuted for being
" different ", and being " different " by force of persecution, they
must arrive at a clear decision, however difficult this may be.
They must either follow the imperative of their religion, the return
to the Promised Land or recognize that that faith is no longer
theirs. To renounce the Jewish faith does not mean to jettison
the perennial values of Judaic tradition. Its essential teachings
have passed long ago into the main-stream of the Judeo-Christian
heritage. If a Judaic religion is to survive outside Israel, without
inflicting the stigma of separateness on its followers and laying
them open to the charge of divided loyalty, it would have to be
a system of faith and cosmopolitan ethics freed from all racial
presumption and national exclusivity. But a Jewish religion thus
reformed would be stripped of all its specifically Jewish content.

These conclusions, reached by one who has been a supporter
of the Zionist Movement for a quarter-century, while his cultural
allegiance belonged to Western Europe, are mainly addressed to
the many others in a similar situation. They have done what
they could to help to secure a haven for the homeless in the teeth
of prejudice, violence and political treachery. Now that the State
of Israel is firmly established, they are at last free to do what they
could not do before : to wish it good luck and go their own way,
with an occasional friendly glance back and a helpful gesture.
But, nevertheless, to go their own way, with the nation whose life
and culture they share, without reservations or split loyalties.

Now that the mission of the Wandering Jew is completed,
he must discard the knapsack and cease to be an accomplice in
his own destruction. If not for his own sake, then for that of his
children and his children's children. The fumes of the death
chambers still linger over Europe ; there must be an end to
every calvary.

THE END